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PSYCHOLOGY 



AN ACCOUNT OF 

THE PRINCIPAL MENTAL PHENOMENA, 

WITH NUMEROUS EXAMPLES 

An Exposition in Popular Form, Designed for the Use of 
Students and of Readers in General 



BY 



ALFRED COOK, Ph.D. 

(University of Halle, Prussia) 

Formerly Fellow by Courtesy of Johns Hopkins University 

as well as Decent in Clark University 



' On earth there is nothing great but man. 
In man there is nothing great but mind." 

— Favorinus. 



HINDS, NOBLE & ELDREDGE 

31-33-35 West 15th Street New York City 



b 






OCT 13 1904 
o<if>^ 3 , f</0^ 

CLASS a, xxo. Ho. 
OOPV 8 



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/, 



*. Copyright, 1904, 
***By ALFRED COOK 



Entered at Stationers Hall 
Al/ Rights Reserved 



—3 



AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS NIECE 

MABEL ELIZABETH COOK 



PREFACE 

Billions of human beings must have Hved and died 
on this earth, yet in a sense the mind of every one of 
them was what the mind of any of us is. Knowledge 
of this sameness of mind is psychology. 

Every human mind has sensations through the nerves, 
perceives things, dreams, remembers matters or forgets 
them, imagines impossible existences, conceives general 
notions, exercises judgment, reasons, systematizes, makes 
inventions, puts forth volitions, is subject to desires, 
affections, and emotions, has some purpose for living, 
and is connected with the past of the universe. 

The question arises, in what way can this great theme 
best be set forth? the answer to which is that, for all 
purposes, no such way exists. There can be no final 
presentation of the subject of psychology, just as there 
can be no final translation of Homer. One presentation 
will be useful for one purpose, another for another. No 
account of the mind has been without its merits. 

The design of the present attempt is to treat of the 
mind by means of examples, to show the great im- 
portance of the several aspects of mind from bodies of 
fact, it being hoped in this way to secure both clearness 
and point. 

A great advantage of proceeding by examples is that 
the student is always able to follow up a case with ex- 
amples which he may himself discover. The way is 



p 



VI PREFACE 

opened up for investigation; psychology is made teach- 
able. It will be found, indeed, that every aspect of the 
mind has a world of facts of which it is the indwelling 
principle. 

The endeavor is also here made to present the several 
topics of psychology systematically, so that the learner 
may the more readily acquire and retain the substance 
of what is stated. 

The method of treatment here attempted, it is believed, 
will be especially useful not only to those just entering 
on the study of the mind, but also to those who wish to 
gather up their knowledge of the subject into one view. 
It should be useful to pupil and teacher, to clergyman 
and layman. 

Any errors in citing examples which may have been 
made will easily be corrected, analogous examples being 
found, since the examples are always cited with the 
principle in view. 
New York, July 19, 1904. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

SENSATION 

PAGE 

We are part mind and part body — Sensations of the skin and muscles 
relative to pain, heat, and resistance — ^Touch — Organ of giddiness — 
Sensations of taste, of smell, of hearing, and of seeing — Nervous 
system as a whole, means by which we get specific knowledge — The 
man without sensory nerves — Purpose of our constitution as part 
body and part mind » . i 

CHAPTER II 

PERCEPTION 

Sight — We see only the ghosts of things — With the eyes we do not handle, 
hear, smell, or taste things, but seeing things we infer how they wiU 
feel, sound, etc. — We do not directly see thickness, shape, size, or 
distance — Time relations and motions not objects of direct percep- 
tion — Persons bom blind and receiving their sight — Berkeley and 
Schopenhauer on sight — Only difference between ordinary dream- 
ing and perception is the consistency arising from answering reality 
— Lotze's ideal realism — Hearing, tasting, smelling, and handling. . 23 

CHAPTER III 

PHANTASY 

Nature of dreams — ^Dreams are perceptive or cognitive, sleeping or 
waking, individual or communal — Dreams have meaning; their ordi- 
nary meaning is on the principle of figurative language — Their ex- 
traordinary meaning has reference to things, distance, and time — 
Dreams are taken as realities — Production of dreams by physical 
and by mental causes — Influence of dreams on our voluntary actions, 
on our organic functions, and on inorganic matter 46 



vni CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

MEMORY 

PAGE 

Memory depends on conditions — Personal conditions are health and 
aptitude — Circumstances of life as early impressions and changes — 
Double memory — Persons possessed of spirits good or bad — Auto- 
matic writing — Intensity of things or vividness — Space as determin- 
ing memory; position, multiplicity — Time, succession, simultaneity, 
and perpetuity — The relation of things; connection, classification, 
cross-reference. . , c .,,.... 72 

CHAPTER V 

IMAGINATION 

The faculty of representing the impossible contrasted with conception — 
The six ways in which possibility can be represented are the six 
ways in which impossibility can be represented — Kant's categories — 
Impossible degree — Impossible time — Impossible size — Impossible 
properties — Impossible causation — Impossible composition, . „ » 97 

CHAPTER VI 

CONCEPTION 

Simple apprehension gives us primitive notions — Notions of the inorgan- 
ic: sky, ground, surroundings — Notions of the organic: Vegetable: 
trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, grains, herbs, roots, gourds, flowers, 
weeds, and moss — Animal: beasts, birds, fishes, shells, amphibians, 
lizards, serpents, insects, worms — Notions of the mental world, es- 
pecially of utilities (lever, incline, bow, thread, bodkin, knife, vessel, 
vehicle), and of religion (monotheism, worship, messiahship, millen- 
nialism, sin, retribution, redemption, immortality) . . . . . .121 

CHAPTER VII 

JUDGMENT 

Our notions are improved by our putting other notions in them, i. e., we 
affirm predicates of a subject — Applied to the inorganic — Homer's 
world — Learning to read — Analytic and synthetic judgments — 
Applied to the organic, vegetable and animal — Differences of judg- 
ment — Applied to the mental, particularly to practical affairs and to 
artistic matters „ . 145 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VIII 



We know a predicate of a thing by a predicate of one of its predicates — 
Enthymeme — Syllogism — Mental image in reasoning — Language — 
Reasoning from equalization — Pythagorean theorem — Arithmetic 
and geometric progressions — Reasoning from consistency — Circum- 
stantial evidence — Decipherments — Importance of reasoning on 
general principles — Reductio ad absurdum — Reasoning from dilem- 
ma, non-mathematical and mathematical — Reasoning from example, 
electricity and chemistry. . . , 170 



CHAPTER IX 

SYSTEMATIZATION 

Mathematical systematization — Physical systematization — Biological 
systematization; botanic, zoological — Psychological systematization; 
grammatical, logical, ethical, aesthetical, and metaphysical. . . . 195 



CHAPTER X 

mVENTION 

Mechanical invention — Chemical invention — Biological invention — ^In- 
stitutional invention — Artistic invention. , „ » . = .. » .215 



CHAPTER XI 

VOLITION 

Materialization of a notion — Man an idea motor — Habit — ^Nervous 
determination of the will — Diseases, manias, instinctive actions — 
Dispositional determination of the will in animals and in men — 
Heredity — Deliberative determination of the will — Free-will — 
Qualitative determination of the will — Attractiveness, importance, 
and ease of mastery — Quantitative determination of the will; ex- 
tensive, protensive, intensive — Relational determination of the will 
— Exclusion, inclusion, and part the one and part the other. . . . 238 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER Xn 

DESIRE 

PAGE 

Feeling of wanting something, now principally feeling of wanting wealth, 
power, and fame, especially feeling of wanting property — Progress 
among animals in supplying wants; among savages — Peru as an 
example of stage attained among primitive civiUzed communities 
in satisfying desires — The Persian empire — Greece — Rome — Con- 
stantinople — Papacy — Protestancy — Modem world; machinery, 
business, schools, government 261 

CHAPTER XIII 

AFFECTION 

Depends on mutuality of participation — Family affections are conju- 
gal, parental, filial, fraternal, nepotal — Friendship: Cicero's state- 
ment, Emerson's — Malevolence — AbnormaUty of envy, jealousy, 
and the like — Affection for animals, as for horses, cats, and dogs — 
Affection for plants — Affection for inanimate things, as for places 
and relics 287 

CHAPTER XIV 

EMOTION 

Unity in variety — Sublime as extensive, dynamical, and moral — ^Pathetic, 
adjunct c5f sublime — Ludicrous — Beautiful in the sense of the sym- 
metrical — ^Picturesque — ^Wonderfvil. ..312 

CHAPTER XV 

DESTINY 

Nature of the mind shows its pvupose — Only possible ends are secularity 
and spirituality, the one standing for wealth, power, and fame, and 
the other for refinement, morality, religion, and knowledge — Secu- 
larity depends on spirituality — Knowledge is chief thing, since re- 
finement, morality, and religion depend on it, and because truth, 
the object of knowledge, is the foundation of art, morality, and re- 
ligion — Courses of study — History, Athens — Buddha, Fichte, 
Kant — ^Temple of Fame — Judgment pronounced on mankind. . . 336 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER XVI 

ORIGIN 

PAGE 

Disposed of to the extent it is shown that the mind had no origin — Mate- 
rialistic consideration; unchangeability of matter; its similarity to 
mind — Infinite divisibihty — Moral consideration; freedom and 
necessity — Transmigration of souls — Reconciliation of the two 
opposing views — Creation from eternity — Axioms — Biological con- 
sideration; propagation by branching, by subdivision, and by eggs — 
Mammals — Man 360 

INDEX 385 



PSYCHOLOGY 



CHAPTER I 

SENSATION 

It is a curious fact that we exist on this earth as 
part mind and part body, a fact not sufficiently taken 
into account. More curious still, the body is a machine 
of the mind by means of which the mind has sensations. 
What, then, are sensations? Nervous tinglings in the 
mind whereby it has intimations of things. 

Sensations, according to the old division of them — 
which, indeed, for our purposes is accurate enough — are 
of five kinds, originated as they are from the skin and 
muscles, from the tongue, from the nose, from the ears, 
and from the eyes. 

To take the first case, the brain, which is somehow 
the organ of the mind, is connected by the nerves with 
the skin and muscles, so that what affects the skin and 
muscles affects the mind also. What is more, the skin 
and muscles, taken by themselves, give rise to three 
kinds of sensations, namely, those of pain, those of heat, 
and those of resistance or pressure. 

It seems strange, no doubt, to say that pain is in the 
mind, even bodily pain, yet such is the case. For, put 



2 SENSATION 

your hand hurriedly into a brier-bush and you have a 
feehng of which you are deeply conscious, it being, there- 
fore, in the mind. 

We should have no feeling of pain in the body, how- 
ever, but for the nerves, as indeed an example shows. 
It is known, for instance, that a mixture of salt and 
pounded ice, if applied for a time to the flesh, say of the 
arm, has the effect to render it almost insensible to pain, 
it being possible then to sear the flesh with a hot iron 
without creating any great pain. This mixture has the 
effect, indeed, to lessen the rapidity with which the blood 
circulates, whence we learn that we feel pain in the skin 
or muscles, only provided the circulation of the blood 
be up to a certain degree, strange as it may seem that the 
mind should be influenced by the swiftness of the blood. 

We should not feel heat either were the nerves of the 
skin and muscles inactive. We have an example in the 
case of a scar. For where there is a scar, no matter how 
large it may be, there is no feeling of heat or cold, the 
nerves of heat having been destroyed. A negro having 
learned this fact, we are told, desired that he might have 
a horse, scar all over, as he did not wish to provide a 
stable for his horse in winter. 

Neither should we feel the resistance of objects to 
the skin and muscles were it not for the nerves. Suppose 
the nerves of the skin do not do their duty. The patient 
is not able with his hands alone to distinguish an onion 
from an apple, not feeling the roughness or smoothness 
of things by means of the skin as we do. Suppose the 
nerves of the muscles do not do their duty. The patient 
does not know in the night-time where his limbs are, 
can, in fact, convince himself that he has limbs only by 



SENSATION 3 

making a search for them, being unable to tell whether 
the muscles of them relax and contract or not. 

Touch is a general term, sometimes used to designate 
the three feelings which have been considered, feeling 
of pain, feeling of heat, and feeling of resistance, it being 
understood, of course, that feelings the opposite of these 
are included in the designations. 

The organ of giddiness, as it is called, is perhaps also 
a case of touch, for the semi-circular canals of the ear 
are supposed to be such an organ, a sort of spirit-level in 
the head, so to say, enabling us to keep our balance 
when we walk, the fluid in the canals, it being supposed, 
affecting the nerves in certain ways as we change posi- 
tion. Fishes are thought to know their position in the 
water by means of this organ. Deaf persons, it is said, 
— many of them at least — are not subject to dizziness as 
we are, the spirit-level in their heads having gotten out 
of order. They have the advantage, doubtless, that they 
are never sea-sick. 

We have next to take into account that sensations of 
taste are dependent on the nerves. 

This is proved in the first place by the action of drugs. 
In Africa and other parts of the world grows a vine, 
called gymnema, the leaves of which, if chewed, have 
the effect that for a certain time afterward sugar does 
not taste sweet. Were the nerves of the tongue con- 
tinually in the condition gymnema puts them in, the 
whole business of the confectioner, as well as that of 
the sugar refiners, would be at an end. Gymnema also, 
whether in the form of the plant or in the form of the 
drug, makes quinine taste as chalk, not an unmixed evil, 
indeed. 



4 SENSATION 

Quinine taken in sweetened coffee, moreover, does not 
taste as bitter as it otherwise would, the coffee having 
some pecuHar effect on the tongue. 

A form of cocaine, known as hydrochlorate, exercises 
such a power over the nerves of the tongue that nothing 
whatsoever for a time tastes bitter. One relates that 
in his boyhood he tasted aloes in the evening and could 
still taste it in the morning. If, however, previously to 
his tasting it, he had put into his mouth hydrochlorate 
of cocaine, he would not have had this experience. 

Diseases of various kinds show the dependence of taste 
on nervous conditions. Jaundice, for example, has the 
effect to produce a bitter taste in the mouth ; diabetes, a 
sweetish one. Certain people in Georgia are known as 
clay-eaters, for, owing to an abnormal condition of their 
bodies, they eat earthy matter with a relish. And per- 
sons suffering from certain maladies are known to crave 
for ashes and even for slate-pencils to eat. 
V" Different parts of the tongue are appropriated to dif- 
ferent uses, this again showing the necessity of the 
nerves to taste. It seems that in general the tip of the 
tongue is more sensitive to what is sweet, the back of 
the tongue to what is bitter. Darwinians say we can 
easily tell what our ancestors ate ages ago, those nuts, 
fruits, roots, and the like, which are sweet or sweetish 
to the taste. Primeval animals, they say, selected their 
food by means of the tongue. Whatever was pungent 
or acidulous they rejected. Other things taken into the 
mouth were thrown out if bitter, most bitter things being 
harmful, strychnine, for instance. We, of a truth, with 
our vast quantities of sugar and sweetmeats, live in what 
was to primeval man the sweet by-and-by. 



SENSATION 



The dependence of taste on the nerves is farther ex- 
emplified in that the tongues of persons differ. One 
person, for example, tastes sweet better with one part 
of the tongue, and another person with another part of 
the tongue. 

Moreover, the fact that it takes time to taste any- 
thing proves that the nerves are indispensable to taste. 
The effect of quinine on the tongue, for example, was 
found in a certain experiment to require 2,196 ten 
thousandths of a second to travel from the tongue 
to the brain, that of sugar only 1,639 ^^^ thousandths 
of a second^ the sweet effect travelling faster than the 
bitter. 

The delicacy of taste is still another thing which dem- 
onstrates that we have to have nerves to taste things. 
For example, a smaller portion of quinine than of sugar 
can be tasted with the tongue, the nerves of it being 
more sensitive for the one than for the other. Should 
we take three hundred and ninety thousand parts of 
water with which to mix one part of quinine, a man 
could yet taste the quinine in each and every portion of 
the mixture. Sugar, on the contrary, a man cannot taste 
in such small, though yet in very small, quantities. In 
order that he may taste it in each and every part of the 
mixture we cannot take more than one hundred and 
ninety-nine thousand parts of water to put with one of 
sugar, that is to say, if there were two hundred thou- 
sand parts of water a man could not taste the sugar. 
But women can taste smaller quantities of things than 
men can taste, the nerves of their tongues being some- 
how different from those of men. When four hundred 
and fifty-six thousand parts of water are mixed with 



6 SENSATION 

one of quinine, women can still taste bitter in each and 
every part of the entire mixture. Sweet they can so 
taste when two hundred and four thousand parts of 
water are mixed with one of sugar. 

Thirdly, it is by means of the nerves — namely, those 
of the nose — that we smell things. 

Nothing can be smelled at all unless it is capable of 
affecting the nose in certain definite ways. Hydrogen, 
for example, is one of those things which nobody ever 
smells, the reason which some assign for this being that 
its particles vibrate so extraordinarily fast that they do 
not have time to be smelled. A particle of hydrogen, it 
is said, vibrates forty-four hundred thousand billion 
times a second, to do which, it would seem, it must in 
a second move through a distance many times that 
around the earth, another instance in which truth may 
be stranger than fiction. 

An example of how the nerves are affected in definite 
ways to produce particular smells is furnished by arsenic 
and sulphur, the bad smell of so many things being due, 
as is supposed, to the presence of one or the other of 
these ingredients. For instance, green paper when burn- 
ing has a disagreeable odor on account of the arsenic 
in it, and sulphuretted hydrogen, one of the worst 
smelling things in the world, gets its odor from 
sulphur. 

The fact that the sense of smell can be dulled by 
applying to the nose certain drugs shows likewise the 
part the nerves play in smell. We have the case of 
men, for example, who being obliged to work amid the 
intolerable odors of a soap factory were able to do so 
by using as snuff a certain mixture of sugar and mor- 



SENSATION 7 

phine, this having the effect to paralyze temporarily the 
nasal nerves. 

It is said, also, that a man who snuffed this prepara- 
tion made a good living by showing, for a price, how 
he could smell of a bottle of which nobody else could 
sniff; but one day he had, by mistake, used strychnine 
instead of morphine, thus forming a mixture which in- 
creases the power of smell. He snuffed this, and, un- 
corking his bottle, brought it close to his nose, his failure 
then being most ludicrous. 

Certain diseases of the nose render smelling impos- 
sible, a thing which could not be were smell not depend- 
ent on the nerves. A Dutchman, the nerves of whose 
nose were totally paralyzed, was entrusted to take two 
small boys from one place to another, not knowing their 
language, nor they his. Coming into the vicinity of a 
slaughter-house, which was concealed from view by trees 
and shrubbery, he was surprised to observe that the boys 
manifested great uneasiness and unwillingness to pro- 
ceed — he had, as a matter of fact, to drive them past 
the place with a stick. Presently, however, arriving at 
a place where was a flower garden hidden from sight 
by a wall, he was puzzled to know why the boys were 
pleased with it and manifested a desire to linger there. 

The dependence of smell on the nerves is also exem- 
plified in animals which do not have these nerves. Most 
whales, for example, have no nerves of smell. If one 
of this kind, therefore, were approaching the island of 
Ceylon, he could not be apprised of the fact; he could 
not smell the spice-laden breezes as the sailors smell 
them. A whale of this kind could have swum up Chi- 
cago River when it was in its most filthy condition, pre- 



8 SENSATION 

vious to the opening of the Drainage Canal, without 
experiencing the least annoyance, what to us must seem 
miraculous. 

What has been said has special importance owing to 
the use of smell. Dogs, as we know, live in a world of 
smells, so to say, and are serviceable chiefly on that 
account, as an example will show. Some convicts had 
escaped one night from the jail of a country town, but, 
greatly to their misfortune, it so happened that a show- 
man had been the same night in the town with several 
bloodhounds. The dogs, taken to the jail by the officers, 
smelled about, and, finding the trail, overtook the con- 
victs before dawn. The scented air rising from the 
tracks of the men had some peculiar effect on the nerves 
of the dogs' noses, causing in the minds of the dogs 
certain sensations which were to the dogs signs that the 
tracks were those of the men who had been in the jail. 
Without these sensations the dogs could not have tracked 
the men. We read that Bruce, the Scottish Chieftain, 
being pursued by bloodhounds, eluded them. For, reach- 
ing a brook in advance of the dogs, he waded a distance 
in the water, and then got up into a tree by means of an 
overhanging limb. The dogs coming to the brook were 
unable to follow him, the tracks, so to say, having been 
washed down stream. 

Romanes made an experiment of importance. Eleven 
men walked behind him, each stepping in his tracks. 
His dog was afterward put upon the trail and succeeded 
in finding him, being able to smell out his master's tracks 
under the eleven others. 

We have the instance of a dog which walked nearly 
a thousand miles to get back to the place from which it 



SENSATION 9 

had been taken, an event so notable that a monument 
was erected to the dog. 

Turtles, going good distances through the sea, find 
Ascension Island, there to deposit their eggs, a place 
which sailors themselves cannot find without calculating 
its latitude and longitude. 

It has, indeed, been objected to the theory that animals 
are guided by smell in finding their way that they do 
not always go the same route, do not, for example, 
always return home by precisely the same route as was 
followed when they were taken from home; but this is 
nothing to the point. For, on similar grounds, it could 
be proved that we make no use of sight in finding our 
way home, since we often return to our home some other 
way than we came from it. 

Working ants, it is said, do not carry on business on 
the basis of sight at all, not being able to see very much, 
but carry on business on the basis of smell altogether. 

It is a mistake to suppose that men even are not 
assisted by smell. A certain blind man, we are told, 
could by smell alone tell if cats were in the house, not- 
withstanding the fact that several doors intervened be- 
tween him and them. A blind man, named Mitchell, 
knew by smell, it is asserted, what were the characters 
of men, whether, for example, one was a rogue, a miser, 
or what not. But why do we speak of this when there 
is Jaeger? This eminent man, a designer of woolen 
clothes, claims to have proved that every nation, kin- 
dred, tribe, family, and individual may be known by the 
smell, thinks that even the secret of heredity can be 
gotten at by it, the soul itself discovered. 

It is strange, for a fact, how small a thing can be 



10 SENSATION 

recognized by smell. If the third part of an ounce of 
musk be divided into a thousand parts, and each of these 
into another thousand, and finally the last parts into a 
hundred each, we can yet smell these smallest parts, any 
one of them by itself. A piece of musk will scent a room 
for years without any perceptible loss of weight, though 
it would seem that some of that musk must be in every 
part of the room continually, to say nothing of what is 
wafted away. 

Smell has importance even as related to cookery, what 
we call tasting things being for the most part smelling 
them, For example, if a blind man were to hold his 
nose he could not from the taste alone tell whether he 
were eating beef, mutton, or pork. A man blindfolded 
and his nose held cannot tell by tasting them a slice of 
onion from a slice of apple as one after the other is laid 
on his tongue. At the table it is not the flavors of 
things that delight us, but their smell, for, as we have 
said, we taste nothing but sour and salt, bitter and sweet. 

Not only the food itself, but the accompaniments of 
the feast, were made to minister to smell by the ancients. 
Athenseus relates that, at the banquet he has described, 
the dishes had been made by baking perfumed clay with 
aromatic woods as fuel. Other cases of the ornamental 
uses of odors were found in the Roman theatres, the 
air of which was perfumed. Incense in houses of wor- 
ship was another instance. Somebody proposes that we 
have galleries of smells, just as we have galleries of 
pictures. The Japanese actually do have a game of 
smells, this possibly taking the place of billiards with 
us, the game consisting in the matching of smells, a 
hundred and twenty being in common use. 



SENSATION 1 1 

Fourthly, the hearing of sounds takes place by means 
of nerves, the nerves pertaining to the ears. For, ex- 
cept on the supposition that certain other persons' ears 
differ from ours in their nervous make-up, how shall 
we account for the fact that they can hear notes an 
octave higher than any which we can hear ? Birds, it is 
believed, can hear the crawling of worms in the earth, 
and are thus enabled to find them. For all we know 
to the contrary, insects may be able to hear the growth 
of the grass, the ascent of sap in trees. 

Defects of hearing teach us the same thing. For there 
was once, as is known, a man by the name of Cowles 
who could hear most things as well as any of us can 
hear them, but who could not in the least hear the sibi- 
lant sound in words which we represent by the letter 
s, whence, in speaking, he did not utter this sound at all. 
What was stranger still, he did not hear the songs of 
birds. Putting his ear close to a cage in which canaries 
were warbling, he could not catch the slightest sound. 
He was about twenty-five years of age when he made 
this discovery, and up to that time, whenever he heard 
anybody speak of the songs of birds or read about any 
such thing, he supposed that the language was figura- 
tive; he had no idea that it described a reality. Birds, 
he supposed, were mute. He could not hear a fife or 
a piano, and must have thought that persons playing 
these instruments were merely taking gymnastic exercise. 

It only remains now to show how sight, like the other 
senses, depends on the nerves. 

To do this we have, in the first instance, to mention 
the effects of santonine on the nerves of the eyes. It 
so happened, it is said, that a boy who was accustomed 



1 2 SENSATION 

to see the stars and stripes floating from the school- 
house near where he lived^ one day saw that the flag 
was yellow; but when speaking to his mother about the 
matter, she assured him that the flag was just the same 
as it had always been. The truth is the boy had been 
given a dose of santonine for a vermifuge, this drug 
having the effect, by its action on the nerves of the eyes, 
to make things look yellow. What better example, then, 
could we have to show that knowledge gained by the 
eyes depends on the state of the nerves, not merely in 
general, but in particular? 

Another example, however, may make the matter 
plainer — the fact that some persons cannot tell black 
from scarlet, the nerves of their eyes somehow differing 
from ours. Wilson, indeed, tells of an undertaker who 
covered a coffin with scarlet cloth, thinking it black. 
We have also the ludicrous example of an old bachelor, 
who lived alone by himself, on whom his friends played 
a practical joke. In collusion with the tailor they caused 
to have made for him a scarlet suit instead of the black 
one which he had ordered. He, not perceiving any dif- 
ference between the two colors, appeared next Sunday 
at church in this gay attire, much to the merriment of 
the people. Moreover, Quakers, it is said, were often 
imposed on in this way. They had scruples against ex- 
hibiting themselves in showy gowns on festive occasions, 
but were given scarlet instead of black ones, without 
their knowing the difference, they being persons, of 
course, whom their friends knew to be unable to dis- 
tinguish red from black. 

Again, an orange, which to us appears yellowish, it is 
said, appears whitish to one who has taken a certain 



SENSATION 13 

preparation of cocaine in a certain dose. Moreover, it 
has often been asserted that there are persons who can- 
not tell gold from silver coins, if the coins are of the 
same size, and it has been inferred consequently that what 
is yellowish to us they see as if it were whitish. Such 
a person, it is presumed, would also see an orange as 
whitish. To some, too, an orange looks blackish, they 
seeing no colors as we do, but merely lights and shades, 
things appearing to them as they do to us in engravings. 
Huddart, more than one hundred and fifty years ago, 
wrote of a man who was unable to distinguish an orange 
from an apple except by its shape. If, then, all those 
who see oranges different should ever get together, what 
a bedlam there would be! For some of them would 
maintain that oranges are white, others that they are 
black, we ourselves that they are yellow. 

Still another class of cases may be mentioned as show- 
ing the dependence of sight on the nervous constitution. 
Many persons, owing to the nature of the nerves of their 
eyes, cannot distinguish between red and green ; the 
color of the red stripes of an American flag, for instance, 
they cannot distinguish from the color of the Irish flag. 
Dalton, when a boy, hearing some bystanders remark 
on the beauty of the uniforms of British troops, these 
uniforms, as most of us are aware, being red, innocently 
enough asked those persons wherein the color of the 
clothes differed from that of the grass. Like many 
other people, he could not tell ripened cherries from the 
leaves on the trees unless he were near them, the nerves 
of his eyes differing from ours. 

Many persons can see no difference between a red 
and a green light, the consequence being that they make 



14 SENSATION 

sad -mistakes. Two ships, for example came into col- 
lision off the coast of Virginia owing to the fact that 
the pilot of one of them could not distinguish a red 
from a green signal, the result being that ten lives were 
lost. 

Strange to say, this state of the nerves is sometimes 
induced by the excessive use of tobacco. The tobacco 
of a certain pilot, for example, is known to have entailed 
on humanity a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, 
since, because of its use, he wrecked a rich cargo in the 
harbor of Fernandina, not being able to perceive any 
difference between red and green. 

Having now considered the several senses in detail, 
we are in a condition to take up the nervous system as 
a whole. 

The mind of each of us has as its organ a brain, and 
from the base of this brain extends what is called the 
medulla oblongata to the spinal cord. The medulla 
oblongata, which may be described either as the lower 
part of the brain or as the upper part of the spinal cord, 
has been held to be a centre of nervous action. The 
nerves of the skin and muscles are connected with it by 
the spinal cord, the nerves of the nose and eyes are 
connected with it by the brain, and the nerves of the 
tongue and ears go directly into it. The medulla oblon- 
gata, therefore, it is thought, is a general centre, the 
capital of the nervous system, as it were. That this is 
so was argued from the fact that both the brain and the 
spinal cord of an animal might be removed and the ani- 
mal still live, while the removal or injury of the medulla 
oblongata was fatal. For example, a rat whose brain 
had been taken out, would yet make jumps to escape 



SENSATION 15 

whenever noises were made resembling the mewings of 
a cat. Moreover, a frog whose brain was removed 
brushed off with its foot acid which had been put on 
its body. It seemed, indeed, as if there were a mind 
or minds in its medulla oblongata looking after things. 
Again, the lancet, a fish very low in the scale of 
existence, manages to get along very well, though it 
has no brain at all, possibly using some sort of medulla 
oblongata. 

The brain proper, however, we are led to believe, per- 
forms a higher function for the mind than the medulla 
oblongata, being, as is supposed, the more immediate 
organ of the mind. 

The human head is a world in itself, having the form 
of an ellipsoid, about six inches in latitude and eight in 
longitude, twenty-five inches or more in circumference. 
Its importance, however, lies not in its size, but in its 
use, it having all the organs of sense, even skin and 
muscles. 

If we might conceive of a man whose head actually, 
and not in his own estimation, was as large as the earth, 
twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, yet would 
such a man have not a whit of advantage over us, for 
we can pass through time with a small quite as well as 
with a big head, just as we can cross a river in a small 
boat quite as well as in a large one, to use an illustra- 
tion from Horace. 

By what means impressions made by things on the 
ends of the nerves are transmitted to the brain we may 
not be able to say, though we can easily enough conceive 
how it is possible. For if the nerves consist of particles 
Standing one next after another, the influence exerted 



1 6 SENSATION 

on the first may be transferred to the next, and so on 
till the influence reaches the brain and finally the mind. 
To use a crude example, applicable in some respects, 
though not in others, we may instance a series of cog- 
wheels. When the wheel at one end is turned, it turns 
correspondingly the wheel at the other end, and this 
notwithstanding the length of the series. Moreover, we 
have the example of electricity, how it conveys messages. 
On this analogy, the nerves might be considered as the 
wires of the animal body. 

At any rate, whenever impressions are made by things 
on the skin, muscles, tongue, nose, ears, or eyes, we have 
corresponding to such impressions certain sensations in 
the mind. 

These sensations are not shadows of objects or any- 
thing of the sort, but are merely signs, intimations of 
things. When we feel a stick, for example, with the 
hand, the sensation in the mind is not an image of the 
stick, but the mind forms the image of the stick by using 
the sensations as clues. The forming of the image of 
the stick by the mind, indeed, is perception, and not 
sensation at all. 

We come now to the most important consideration of 
all, that the nerves are necessary to our getting any 
specific knowledge of things. Indeed, this must hold 
without exception, unless the mind is possessed of some- 
thing like a clairvoyant power, independent of the nerves, 
by means of which it may know things. 

Oysters know very little as it is. What would they 
know without some means of sensation? 

Plain enough it is that a person who should be born 
blind, deaf, and without touch, taste, or smell, could 



SENSATION 17 

never know anything specifically of things as we know 
it ; could have, in short, no experience of things as pleas- 
ant, or painful, warm or cold, resistant or yielding, salt, 
sour, bitter or sweet, fragrant or fetid, noisy or musical, 
shadowy or tinted. 

Of such a person it could be said that he would sleep 
as comfortably on a stack of thistles as on a couch of 
down, and would be no colder in January than in June. 
If he ran his head against a stone wall he would not 
know it. He would eat the sourest apples without 
complaint and walk undisturbed in the midst of stench. 
He would not be stunned by the explosion of a powder- 
mill. Midnight and noontide would be the same to 
him. 

It is plain, also, that he would have none of that 
knowledge which we ourselves, or others from whom 
we have learned it, have deduced from knowledge ac- 
quired by the senses, not, indeed, unless, as was said, 
he were possessed of something like a clairvoyant power, 
and one, too, not dependent on nerves. 

He could know nothing of geography. He could not 
know that the Caspian Sea is the northern end of the 
Indian Ocean or that the Antarctic is the southern end 
of it. He could not know that Lake Genesaret is below 
the surface of the sea or that Lake Titicacca is above it. 
He could not know that of all rivers on the earth the 
Amazon is the largest and longest, or that the Jordan 
is well-nigh the smallest and shortest. He could not 
know that Java rests in eternal calm or Greenland in 
eternal snow. He could not know that the Himalaya 
Mountains are the highest in the world or that the Ozark 
are among the lowest. He could not know that in Ken- 



1 8 SENSATION 

tucky is a country under ground or that in Africa are 
countries in the midst of deserts. 

He could know nothing of astronomy. He could not 
know anything of high or of low tide, anything of new 
or of full moon. He could not know that the earth is 
round or be able to believe that it is flat. He could not 
know that there are seas on Mars or rings around 
Saturn. 

He could know nothing of botany. He could not 
know anything of trees or shrubs, anything of grasses 
or grains, anything of cabbages or cucumbers, anything 
of weeds or flowers. He could not know what plants 
belong to the same family. He could not know that 
there is a plant the leaves of which, if they poison us, 
the fruit thereof will cure us. 

He could know nothing of zoology. He could not 
know anything of horses, cattle, dogs, or cats, anything 
of snakes, lizards, or toads. No feeling of wonder 
could he have over the duck-mole, no comparison of size 
institute between elephant and mouse. He could have 
no more idea of the Darwinian than of the apostolic 
succession. 

He could know nothing of history. He could not 
know anything of the kitchen-middeners or of the 
mound-builders. He could not know whether the Egyp- 
tians lived before or after the Romans, whether or not 
there were any Egyptians. He could not know that it 
now counts more for Marcus Aurelius that he wrote 
his meditations than it does that he was Emperor of 
Rome. 

He could know nothing of morals. He could not 
know that honesty is the best policy. Of good or bad 



SENSATION 19 

manners he could have no notion, whether, for example, 
it is better to eat with a knife than with a fork. 

He could know nothing of jurisprudence. He could 
not know anything of immemorial usage or of the rules 
of evidence. He could not know that the Romans were, 
as Draper says, the first people to discover that next to 
the privilege of making the laws is the privilege of say- 
ing what the laws mean. 

He could know nothing of politics. Of constitutions 
and governments he could not know anything, could be 
neither a royalist nor a republican, neither a centrist nor 
a rightist, neither a single nor a double taxer. 

He could know nothing of art. He could not know 
that the Parthenon is the best of buildings, the Jupiter 
the best of statues, the Madonna the best of pictures, 
the Messiah the best of oratorios, the Iliad the best of 
epics, the Hamlet the best of tragedies, the De Corona 
the best of speeches. 

He could know nothing of theology. He could neither 
believe that there is but one God nor that gods be many. 
He could be neither a Catholic nor a Protestant, neither 
a supralapsarian nor a sublapsarian. He could have no 
opinion as to whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from 
the Father only or from the Son also. 

The world itself could not contain the books which 
should enumerate and describe the things whereof he 
could have no knowledge. For of things specifically it 
is plain he could know nothing at all. Should we con- 
cede, as indeed we may, that he might have innate ideas, 
manifest or latent, yet plainly these without experience 
would be empty. 

All this, it seems, follows, as was said, unless we 



20 SENSATION 

might suppose that he could get some facuhy of clair- 
voyance independent of nerves. 

Taking things as we know them, it would appear that 
we got ourselves born merely for the purpose of arriv- 
ing at a specific knowledge of things, seeing that get- 
ting one's self born is the same thing as getting a 
nervous system. 

If our bodies were made up of nothing but the nerves 
of sense, this contention would be at once manifest, for 
the reason that the nerves of sense have no other use 
than to give us clues whereby we are able to know what 
is specifically true of things. Come to think of it, how- 
ever, our bodies, in principle, do consist of nothing but 
the nerves of sense, strange as this may seem. " What 
then?" you will be ready to ask. "Are not the stom- 
ach, heart, and lungs, with their accessories, a part of 
the body?" Doubtless they are, but they are nothing 
but an adjunct of the nerves of sense, a device merely 
to adapt the nerves of sense to a world of time. Every- 
thing is in eternal motion. The only way that the ner- 
vous system can exist, then, is that it be built up as it 
is torn down. The stomach, heart, and lungs, together 
with their accessories, are nothing but a device for 
dragging the nervous system through time. " What 
then? " you will be ready to ask. " Are not the bones, 
muscles, and motors, with their accessories, a part of 
the body?" Doubtless they are, but then they are 
nothing but an adjunct of the nerves of sense, a device 
to adapt the nerves of sense to a world of space. Every- 
thing is in a different place than everything else. The 
only way, then, that the nervous system can exist is 
through locomotion. The bones, muscles, and motors, 
with their accessories, are nothing but a device for drag- 



SENSATION 21 

g'mg the nervous system through space. Our bodies 
consist of nothing but the nerves of sense, with an 
arrang-ement on the one hand by which we get from 
moment to moment, and an arrangement on the other 
by which we get from place to place. Nothing else was 
possible, since matter acts under the forms of time and 
space. 

It is, therefore, a great joke, and one showing to the 
best effect the irony of nature, that whereas the clown 
consciously or unconsciously despises knowledge, dis- 
allowing alike both science and classics, his bodily con- 
stitution should nevertheless demonstrate that but to get 
knowledge he would never have been born. 

" But is it not," you will probably ask, " the chief 
end of man to glorify God and enjoy him forever?" 
Doubtless it is, but how to do this, that is the question. 
Really to get knowledge is just the way to do it. For 
by knowledge we come to understand the truth of things, 
the laws of nature. Should it be asked, What, then, if 
we do? it is possible to say. We have communion 
with God only through the truth, the truth of things 
alone expressing what the will of God is. For example, 
by the diseases and death which poisons produce we 
know it to be the will of God that we should not take 
them into our bodies. What is true of poisons in this 
respect is true of everything else. We come to what 
the will of God is respecting anything only through the 
truth. We do his will in fact only as we know what it 
is. Nay, perfectly knowing what his will is, shall we 
not surely do it ? Presumably, seeing that otherwise we 
should put the unreasonable for the reasonable. Com- 
ing, then, into unison with the will of God through our 
knowledge of things, we do glorify him and, not only 



22 SENSATION 

SO, we do also enjoy him, and that always, our religious 
emotions, it is plain, arising out of our view of the 
truth of things taken as a whole. Rising, then, to the 
true, the beautiful, and the good through the knowledge 
which our nerves make possible, we fulfil our mission. 

We must, therefore, conclude that everybody who has 
been born into the world came to take on flesh and blood 
solely for the purpose of becoming informed about 
things; for that purpose, indeed, left his former state, 
whatever it might have been, whether one of existence 
or of non-existence, of joy or of sorrow, of glory or of 
shame. We must conclude this in fact, unless we might 
believe that he could have possessed himself of some 
clairvoyant power by which it would have been possible 
for him to have knowledge without nerves. We must 
conclude that the sorrow which fills our hearts and is 
expressed in tears when we gaze on the mortal remains 
of one untimely cut down is the sorrow which we feel 
that one should have been deprived at least temporarily 
of his means of knowledge. 

The dogma of absorption, as held long since by the 
Hindoos, is that one should so conduct himself as at 
last to be absorbed into divinity, a dogma which, taken 
figuratively, we are bound to accept. For the truth 
issues from the divine will and expresses what the divine 
will is, so that to come into unison with this will, be 
absorbed into it, as it were, we have to know what the 
truth is. All humanity, past, present, and to come, re- 
duces to mind obtaining knowledge through the nerves, 
coming thus at the truth, or, as the song has it, 

" We are traveling home to God 
In the way the fathers trod." 



CHAPTER II 

PERCEPTION 

Of all the processes of the mind perception Is at once 
the best and the worst understood. It Is nothing- but 
seeing, hearing, and the like. Who does not think that 
he knows all about it — and yet how soon must he be 
undeceived ? 

The chief interest relative to perception lies in this, 
that what we actually perceive of things is nothing but 
images in the mind, created by the mind Itself, but 
created on suggestion of sensations. 

It must be plain to anybody that we do not directly 
see with the eyes more than one-fifth of the kinds of 
properties which things manifest. Indeed, are there not 
four senses beside sight? We do not directly see with 
the eyes how things will feel, what sounds they are 
capable of, or how they will taste or smell — all this we 
calculate and Image. 

To take the case of how things will feel, we do not 
directly see with the eyes that anything is material, has 
rigidity, will resist touch, is Impenetrable, That we do 
not see this is proved from what Is known once to have 
happened In a Grecian temple. A human face, smiling 
and scowling, was made to appear over the place from 
which the smoke of incense arose^ In the midst of the 
smoke itself, yet the attendant would surprise the spec- 
tators by passing his sword right through the face, just 

83 



24 PERCEPTION 

as if' the face were nothing but air, as, indeed, it was. 
The trick was performed by a series of mirrors before 
the first of which sat a person out of sight. His Hkeness 
was reflected from this mirror to the second, and so on, 
till it fell at last upon a concave mirror, which had the 
effect to throw the likeness out over the incense. It was 
this likeness which the spectators mistook for a person's 
face, and why should they not so mistake it? For it 
looked exactly as a human face. Now in every case 
each of us does just what these spectators did. We do 
not see how things feel, but we judge from appearances 
how they feel. If we saw directly with our eyes, as some 
people suppose we do, how things feel, such a mistake 
as that which was made in the Grecian temple would 
be impossible. We should have to see just how things 
feel. 

We do not directly see with our eyes that things will 
burn or pain us. We merely conclude that they will 
do so from certain signs, and hence the mistakes in this 
particular also which we make. We see a man stand 
barefooted upon what seems to us a red-hot griddle, it 
being heated to all appearances by the gas-jets below 
it. Actually, however, it is merely painted red. The 
gas-jets below it are turned down so far as not to heat 
it very much. Never, indeed, do we see with our eyes 
that griddles are hot. We merely guess that they are 
hot. Whether we are correct or not makes no difference 
so far as the process of perception is concerned. 

We do not in any way whatsoever hear with our eyes, 
that is to say, we do not with our eyes directly see what 
sounds a body is capable of making, how a drum will 
sound, for example. A man comes upon the platform. 



PERCEPTION 25 

holding in his hand what we take to be a cage with a 
canary inside it. We suppose that the bird can sing, 
birds with the appearance of this one usually being able 
to do so. We are surprised that, on a sudden, the cage 
and canary vanish away. What we took for a cage was 
only a pasteboard frame so arranged that it was easily 
folded up. What we took to be a canary was only a 
stuffed one. The frame folding up suddenly, enclosing 
the stuffed bird, glided unperceived down the perform- 
er's coat-sleeve. We no more see with our eyes that 
any other bird will sing than we saw with our eyes that 
this stuffed canary would sing. We merely reason out 
and imagine from what we see that birds can sing. 

We do not see with our eyes directly how anything 
smells. We infer from what we see how it will smell. 
Seeing a bottle out of which he had once taken a dis- 
agreeable dose, a man could not be persuaded to smell 
of it again, though it now contained nothing but rose- 
water. The signs were to him that it would smell bad, 
that was all. He did not see how it would smell, but 
thought how it would smell. 

We do not see with the eyes how things will taste, 
apples or oranges, for example. We infer this merely. 
Otherwise we should not be deceived, as we sometimes 
are, mistaking waxen apples for real ones, orange skins 
stuffed with cotton for oranges indeed. If a horse had 
green spectacles on he would doubtless think that shav- 
ings must have the taste of grass. 

To sum up, then, we do not see with the eyes how a 
thorn will feel, how a bell will sound, how a rose will 
smell, how a fig will taste — all this we guess at. We 
do not, in other words, see how things are related to 



26 PERCEPTION 

senses other than sight, but on the strength of past ex- 
perience we infer how they are related to these senses. 

What in any case we see is merely an image which 
appears to us to be where the object which it represents 
is situated. There is nothing material or tangible about 
this image, as must be evident from the fact that we see 
just such images in the dreams of our sleep. The tree, 
for example, which we see in our dream does not look 
in any way different from the tree which we see with 
our eyes. The fact is that the tree which we see with 
our eyes when we are awake is nothing but an image 
in the mind constructed by the mind itself. 

This is still more evident if we take into account what 
are usually called our space perceptions of things, namely, 
thickness, shape, size, and distance. 

Space has three dimensions — length, breadth, and 
thickness; from the first two we guess at the third, not 
seeing directly that things are thick, but merely thinking 
that they are so. Berkeley made a telling statement of 
this when he declared that we see only the ends of 
things, the ends toward us, not what is behind them. 
Had he thought of it, he would probably have said that 
to see behind the ends of things would be like seeing 
under the ground; we should as easily do the one thing 
as the other. As we can at best see but the surfaces of 
things, what we know of the thickness of things must 
be reasoned out and imagined. If, as is maintained, we 
do not directly see with the eyes the distance of things 
from us, we can, of course, not directly see with the 
eyes that one part of a thing is farther from us than 
another part of it, as indeed we should have to do were 
we directly to see the thickness of things. (We can 



PERCEPTION 27 

anticipate a point here, it remaining to be considered 
whether or not we directly see witli the eyes the distance 
of things.) 

Another proof that we do not directly see the thick- 
ness of things is taken from the laws of perspective. It 
is known to everybody that lines can be so drawn on a 
flat surface that when we look at them they have to us 
the appearance of a solid object; what, for example, is 
only a disc, appearing to us as a ball. When, then, we 
look at an actual ball — such is the argument — what we 
really see, if anything, is nothing but a disc, we judging 
it to be globular from the positions of the lines. Pictures 
for the stereoscope consist of two parts, one represent- 
ing the object as seen by the right, and the other the 
object as seen by the left eye. When we look at the 
picture these two views are combined in imagination to 
produce the view of the whole. When we see objects 
without the stereoscope — such is the argument — we 
really, then, also combine in imagination the two views, 
the one of the right and the other of the left eye. When 
the real colors of objects are shown in pictures, as, for 
example, in a picture of the pyramids, a view of them 
in the stereoscope differs hardly at all from a view of 
the objects. We cannot persuade ourselves that we are 
not looking on things having extent in the third dimen- 
sion, though what we actually see is nothing more than 
lines and shades on a flat surface. 

We do not directly see the shape of things with the 
eyes; this also we have to reason out and imagine. In 
the first place, we have to combine in imagination the sev- 
eral lines of direction which an object presents in order to 
form any idea of its shape, not seeing the combination 



28 PERCEPTION 

directly, but only mediately. Seeing a ring of points 
marked on a black-board, for example, we are able to 
make out the ring only by combining in imagination those 
separate points. In the second place, as we do not see 
with the eyes the direction of lines as they are, but only 
as we think them to be, it is plain also from this that we 
see only such shapes as we ourselves conjure up and set 
before the imagination, shapes being made out by the 
directions of lines. This is proved by a notable example, 
namely, that if from the ground we look at statues which 
are on the top of a high building we see them as if they 
stand perpendicular. Going to the top of the building, 
however, we are surprised to find that these same statues 
actually lean backward. The statues had, in other words, 
to be placed slanting in order that they might appear 
erect. If we go to Paris and view the statue of Bona- 
parte which stands on the high Vendome column, we 
shall notice that Bonaparte appears to lean a little back- 
ward, forward, or sideways, according to the position 
we are in ; the statue, inasmuch as it must be seen from 
all sides, had to be placed perpendicular on the pedestal. 
The Parthenon, the temple at Athens on the Acropolis, 
was perfectly symmetrical in form, every line in it 
appearing to the eye to be exactly straight, though in 
fact there was not a straight line in it. If the lines had 
been made perfectly straight they would not have ap- 
peared so, we not seeing directions of lines as they are, 
but only as we think them to be. 

There is, however, still another way in which we may 
convince ourselves that we do not directly see the shape 
of things. Take a card-board with two pin-holes in it, 
one for each eye. Through these look at a coin which 



PERCEPTION 29 

you hold a few feet off. You will be surprised that the 
coin does not appear to be round, but oval. You, there- 
fore, do not see the shape of the coin as it is, but only 
as you imagine it to be. It is, moreover, known that a 
stick, part of which is immersed in water, although it 
be straight, yet appears bent, the water refracting the 
rays of light at an angle differing from that at which 
the air refracts them. Wherefore, as the conditions 
under which a thing is seen modify the shape which we 
give it, it is plain that the shape of a thing is a matter 
of judgment, rather than a matter of direct sight. We 
have to conjure up out of the given conditions what the 
shape shall be. 

We may, if we choose, see certain things directly 
opposite in shape to what they are. Looking at the out- 
side of an actor's mask, for example, we can, if we wish, 
see it as the form of a face, not right side, but wrong 
side out. On the same principle, an image of a face in 
relief, say that of Benjamin Franklin, may, if we wish, 
appear to us the concave mould in which the image of 
the face might have been cast. 

The size of objects is inferred and imagined by us, 
not directly seen with the eyes. We have, in truth, to 
infer and imagine the size of an object either from the 
distance we think it from us or from comparison of the 
object with other objects the size of which we think 
we know. We have, in short, two principal ways of 
estimating the size of things. An example of the first 
is this: It is known that statues on the top of a very 
high building have' to be larger than natural in order to 
appear of proper size, the reason being that we under- 
estimate the height of such a building. We think the 



30 PERCEPTION 

statues smaller because we think them nearer us than 
they are. What is the same thing, making a mistake 
as to the distance of the objects from us, we also make 
a mistake as to their size. 

Statues which are set up on heights are made very 
large, by means of which they make the greater impres- 
sion on us, this having the effect to make us imagine 
them larger than we should otherwise take them to be. 
Indeed, the amount of impression which a thing pro- 
duces on us might have been put down as one of the 
means by which we make out its size. 

Of estimating the size of an object by comparison of 
it with objects of which we think we know the size, we 
have a good example from Abercrombie. Seeing men 
and women entering the door of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
he supposed that they were children. For he compared 
them with the door, thinking it an ordinary one, when 
in reality it is very large. Entering New York harbor, 
as one comes from a voyage at sea, he is surprised that 
the Statue of Liberty looks so small, the reason probably 
being that it bears no proper proportion to the neighbor- 
ing hills. The great pyramid, it is said, looks larger than 
usual if a huge camel be standing at its base. 

That the size of things is merely reasoned out and 
imagined by us, and not directly seen with the eyes, is 
also established by the different sizes which people 
attribute to the moon. The moon looks larger when near 
the ground than when up in the sky, the reason being 
that when the moon is near the ground, intervening 
objects, such as trees and the like, make its distance 
from us appear greater than when it is over us. We 
imagine the size of the moon, in short, from the dis- 



PERCEPTION 31 

tance we imagine it to be from us. When seen behind 
the mass of leaves and twigs which a tree holds the 
moon looks larger than usual, because we compare it 
with this mass, the size of which we pretty accurately 
know. Le Conte mentions that when the sun sets at 
San Francisco it appears to be broader than a certain 
island behind which it goes down. When the moon is 
up in the sky, to one person it appears no larger than 
a saucer, to another as large as a plate, to a third the 
size of a wash-tub. The explanation is that when the 
moon is over our heads there are no intervening objects 
to lengthen out the distance nor any with which we may 
compare the moon. Everybody has to suit himself, 
imagining what he will. 

We do not directly see the distance of things from 
us, but estimate it either by means of the size we sup- 
pose things to have, or by the atmosphere, or by the 
intervening objects. Small distances we estimate by the 
amount of effort we make either to converge or to focus 
the eyes. 

We have this incident given to illustrate estimating 
distance by means of the supposed size of objects. A 
w^oman, seeing on a plain a small boy playing with a 
little wagon, took them to be a good distance from her 
because she supposed that the boy was a man and that 
the wagon was an ordinary one — in other words, being 
wrong about the size, she was wrong about the distance. 
A better example is that of a man looking out of his 
window, and, seeing the spire of a dove-cote not far off, 
which, however, he placed at a good distance, supposing 
it to be a church spire, the which, if it had really been, 
it must have been a long distance off to look so small. 



32 PERCEPTION 

Owing to the kind of impression which objects make 
on US' in a clear atmosphere we take them to be nearer 
us than they are. This is the reason why strangers 
arriving in Denver undertake to walk out to Pike's Peak, 
thinking it close at hand, when it is about seventy-five 
miles away. The air of Italy is likewise clear. Look- 
ing from Frascati, says Schopenhauer, Tivoli, though 
far off, looks to be close by. A foggy atmosphere, on 
the other hand,, makes things look more distant than they 
are. Two trains approaching each other on the same 
track during a fog, the men who jumped from them to 
save their lives were surprised that the collision took 
place so soon after they first caught sight of the dan- 
ger, the trains having been nearer together than they 
supposed. 

It is well known that intervening objects increase to 
the mind the length of anything. A field through which 
cocks of hay extend looks longer than it does without 
them. A stretch of water in which ships are anchored 
one after another looks longer than it does when the 
ships have sailed away. 

How we estimate a short distance by the amount of 
effort we make to converge the eyes is illustrated by 
many well-known examples. If we shut one eye and 
try as quickly as we can to put the stopper in the ink- 
stand, we shall probably make some ludicrous blunder, 
because we cannot converge the eyes quickly, and by 
the amount of effort to do so estimate the distance from 
the stopper to the ink-stand. For the same reason we 
find difficulty if, shutting one eye, we attempt quickly 
to thread a needle or to snuff a candle. The estimation 
of short distances by the amount of effort we make to 



PERCEPTION . 33 

focus the eyes is exemplified by holding a book at arm's 
length and then bringing it suddenly toward the face. 
We shall be made sensible of the amount of effort we 
make for each particular distance as the book approaches. 
By the amount of effort made each time we judge the 
distance for that time. 

It is thus made out, therefore, that we do not directly 
see with our eyes the thickness, shape, size, and distance 
of things, but calculate and imagine them merely. 

The time relations of things are fabricated in the mind 
somewhat as are the space relations. We do not, for 
instance, see with the eyes the passage of time, but cal- 
culate it. One who is suffering from rheumatism won- 
ders how other persons are able to lie abed so late in 
the morning, the time between the first break of dawn 
and the rising of the household seeming intolerably long 
to him. To those, however, who are lying comfortably 
in bed this same time seems very short. 

Several considerations prove that we imagine and 
infer the motion of things rather than directly see it with 
the eyes. In the first place, things may appear to move 
when in reality they are standing still, or may appear 
to stand still when in reality they are moving. This we 
observe when we are traveling in railroad coaches. Our 
own coach seems to be moving when it is the train beside 
ours that is in motion. The objects along the road seem 
to be gliding past us, when it is ourselves who are speed- 
ing away. In the second place, certain things can be 
made to appear to move either this way or that, just 
as we choose. Looking at an old-fashioned wind-mill 
with its sails, if we give attention to the upper part of 
the sails they appear to turn in one direction, if we give 



34 PERCEPTION 

attention to the lower part of the sails they appear to 
turn in the opposite direction. In the third place, things 
may seem to us to move even in impossible ways. Water 
may appear to run uphill if the ground along the stream 
is descending when we think it to be level. 

We do not, then, see directly with the eyes the quali- 
ties of things or their space or their time relations. We 
reason out and imagine what these are. 

Persons born blind and brought to sight by operations 
for cataract have at first great difficulty in seeing things 
as we do, because they have had no previous experience 
in using reason and imagination for such a purpose. 
The oldest case on record is that of a boy, thirteen years 
of age, on whose eyes Cheselden operated. The boy was 
either born blind or had lost his sight so early in life as 
to have no recollection of having seen anything. He 
therefore lacked skill in applying his reason and imag- 
ination to things. First one eye was operated upon, and 
then, after the lapse of about a year, the other eye. On 
receiving the sight of the first eye it was found that he 
could not properly make out the qualities of things. He 
was surprised that pictures did not feel like the things 
which they represented to sight. He asked which sense 
it was that was lying to him, whether it were sight or 
whether it were touch. No doubt he would have been 
surprised that the countenance of a good singer might 
not be beautiful, as, we are told, he thought it strange 
that those he most loved were not prepossessing in looks. 
He would also have been surprised that the sweetly 
smelling orris-root is somewhat scraggy in appearance. 
He was actually surprised that things which tasted 
agreeable to him were not always pleasant to look upon. 



PERCEPTION 35 

Certainly we have it proved in this that we do not 
directly see with our eyes the rigidities of things, their 
sounds, their odors, and their flavors, but have to infer 
and imagine these qualities — otherwise the boy on com- 
ing to his sight would have been able to see them as we 
think we do. 

As regards the thickness of things, their shape, their 
size, and their distance, it is interesting to know what 
was the experience of the boy. , 

He did not at first, the surgeon says, see things as 
having depth in space at all. Had he seen a pitcher or 
bowl on the table, either of them would have been to 
him merely a flat surface. He was unable to compre- 
hend how pictures on flat surfaces could represent objects 
that to touch show thickness. He could not make out 
the shape of things. He could not so much as distin- 
guish the cat from the dog. Looking at the cat, and 
then having felt it over with the hand, he said he 
thought he might know it next time. He was unable 
to see things of proper size. They appeared to him 
larger than is natural. When the second eye was 
brought to sight things appeared larger to it than to 
the eye first opened. To both eyes, used at the same 
time, things appeared about twice as large as when he 
used only the first eye made to see. He was, moreover, 
unable to form correct ideas of size in general. He 
could not conceive how the house could be larger than 
a room of it. He was also unable to conceive how his 
father's picture could be contained in a locket. He was 
not able properly to estimate the distance of things 
from him. Indeed, at first, he did not see things at a 
distance at all. Everything seemed to be touching his 



36 PERCEPTION 

eye. When he had learned to distinguish the distance 
of objects on Epsom Downs he called it a new kind of 
seeing. 

We seem, then, to have it demonstrated from the case 
of this boy, unfortunate though he was, but destined to 
everlasting mention, that the seeing of things consists 
merely in applying reason and imagination to the sen- 
sations given us by the nerves of the eyes; that we do 
not directly see with the eyes the qualities of things, 
their space relations, and the like. 

The case of Caspar Hausar has a bearing on this sub- 
ject. For although not born blind, he had been confined 
in a dungeon from infancy. He was found wandering 
on the streets of Nuremberg, having in his possession a 
letter that gave an account of his previous confinement 
and stated that the time had now arrived when it had 
been found practicable to set him at liberty. He de- 
clared that when he first left the dungeon all he could 
see was a window-shutter in front of his eyes on which 
various colors were flitting about. Nothing as a single 
distinct object could he see. The shutter which he saw 
was of course an image of the one on which he had 
gazed so long in the prison. With sufficient practice he 
learned, indeed, to see things as we do ; but why the 
need of this practice ? Evidently because he had to learn 
to exercise his reason and imagination on the sensations 
of sight, the act of seeing being an intellectual and not 
merely a physical affair. 

Haslam gives an account of a boy who, though his 
eyes were good enough, could not see things as we do, 
since from feebleness of mind he did not sufficiently 
use his reason and imagination to interpret the sensa- 



PERCEPTION 37 

tlons which his eyes gave him. He could not estimate 
the distance of objects with any approach to accuracy, 
for which reason he was known even to clutch at the 
moon with his hand. He, no doubt, thought it a cheese 
or something of the sort a few feet from his head ! 
There is an account of a feeble-minded woman brought 
to sight by an operation for cataract which is much to 
the same purport. She was, as a general thing, not 
interested in anything, but there was one exception — 
nuts and apples. These she could easily see and would 
eagerly grasp after. She could, in other words, see only 
those things with regard to which she could be induced 
to exercise her reason and imagination. 

We have, then, to adopt as a theory of sight this — 
that what we seem to see as if they be objects are really 
nothing but images in the mind which the mind itself 
creates. How, indeed, do we think this can be other- 
wise, when it is made out that we do not directly see 
with the eyes the qualities of things or their space or 
time relations? 

Berkeley, who was the first to set forth this theory 
with anything like an approach to thoroughness, relied 
mainly for his proof of it on two points, his main argu- 
ment being that from the nature of the case we can 
know only what is in the mind, not what is outside it, 
consequently that whatever we seem to see of a thing 
is only an idea. Notwithstanding the desperate efforts 
made to show the insufficiency of this contention, the 
argument still maintains its force. For what we see of 
things is manifestly only our knowledge of them. His 
special plea was that the world of sight is different from 
the world of touch, nobody ever seeing what he touches 



38 PERCEPTION 

nor -touching what he sees. We have learned to merge 
these two worlds into one on theory merely, he claims. 
He showed that we do not directly see with the eyes 
the distance, size, or situation of things, but have to 
infer the same. He had learned from Alhazen, an Arab, 
who lived in the Middle Ages, that the moon is seen to 
be of different sizes at different times, and even at the 
same time, by different persons, owing to the fact that 
its size has to be calculated from various circumstances, 
and is not directly given. He was also familiar with 
what had become known as Molyneux's query. Whether 
or not a man born blind would, on first receiving his 
sight, be able to distinguish a ball from a cube, both 
ball and cube being nearly the same in size. Berkeley, 
following up the clues which these examples suggested, 
worked out the great theory that what we see as if they 
be things are really only the ghosts of things. 

Schopenhauer maintains the theory on four grounds : 
First, though the image of an object on the eye is upside 
down, we yet see the object right side up. Secondly, 
though the image of an object is on the eye, we yet see 
the object not on the eye, but at a distance from us. 
Thirdly, though there is on each of our eyes an image 
of the object, we yet see not two objects, but only one. 
Fourthly, though the image of an object on the eye is 
perfectly flat, we yet see the object as having thickness. 
These facts plainly prove, Schopenhauer contends, that 
what we see as an object is merely an image which the 
mind creates on suggestions of sense. We see objects 
right side up because the mind has learned how to con- 
struct the right kind of an image to represent an object. 
For the same reason we see objects at a distance, do 



PERCEPTION 39 

not see them double, and see them as extended in the 
third dimension. Why it is that seeing but the ghosts 
of things, we yet see them how and where the things 
are, Schopenhauer explains on the ground that we feel 
things with the rays of light. When we look at the sun, 
for example, it is the same as if we are poking the sun 
with sticks ninety-two million miles long to find out 
what sort of thing the sun is! 

Berkeley held that dreams appear the same to us as 
realities for the reason that realities are really dreams. 
Nobody pretends, says he, that we see anything in our 
dreams but images; why, then, should we pretend that 
we see anything in our experiences but images? As 
nobody pretends there was any cow present when he 
saw one in his dream, why pretend that there is any 
present when he sees one in reality? Why pretend to 
the seeing of stars millions of miles from his head? 
Manifestly, says Berkeley, we see nothing in life but 
dreams. A man who lodged at a tavern, rising early 
in the morning, saw in the hall as he entered it a man 
coming to meet him, was in fact about to accost the 
man, when, greatly to his surprise, he discovered that 
it was himself. As a matter of fact, he had only been 
looking into a very good and almost perfect mirror. 
Somewhat after this manner, says Berkeley, we take for 
things what are only images in the mind. We do not 
see things, but only dreams. 

What we ordinarily call a dream, however, differs 
from our every-day experience in that it may in certain 
respects be inconsistent. Fosgate relates that, having 
once dreamed of falling into a chasm, he dreamed again 
the same night the very same dream, thinking he was 



40 PERCEPTION 

now- awake. A boy who had heard it said that it was 
a bad sign to dream of anything white, dreaming once 
of a white horse, quickly bethought himself, '' I must 
be careful not to dream of this to-night." A man, 
dreaming that he was attending the funeral of a friend, 
dreamed at the same time that he was conversing with 
that friend, the same alive and well. We give, more- 
over, no heed to the length of time in dreams. A sol- 
dier, for example, was twice called, the intervals between 
the calls being short, yet in that brief time, as he after- 
ward related, he dreamed of events which would natu- 
rally occupy days. Tennent, on the contrary, who lay 
seven days in a trance, said on his recovery that the 
whole time seemed but a moment. 

On the contrary, consistency is characteristic of our 
every-day experience. For example, a wagon of which 
we have knowledge through the perceptions of the senses 
wears out only gradually and in a way that every change 
in it is distinctly marked and accounted for. The wood 
which wears away or rots is by no means lost, but is 
merely separated into parts, the oil which evaporates 
from it is preserved, the particles of iron which are 
rubbed off last still and always. Indeed, that wagon 
never is nor ever can be lost to human experience. Like 
the brook of Tennyson it goes on forever. In some 
form or other it will extend to the most distant future. 
It also goes back to the remotest past. The wood was 
once in trees, the oil in flax, the iron in mines. The 
trees out of which the wood came were formed of such 
things as earth, water, and air — constituents which ex- 
isted in the world when the world was as yet without 
form and void. The like may be said of whatever else 



PERCEPTION 4 1 

is in the wagon. Indeed, if we look the matter up, we 
shall find that the wagon in some form or other was 
existing when the morning stars sang together. All the 
modifications of its materials which have been or will 
be made were or will be consistent not only with them- 
selves, but with all human experiences, past, present, 
and to come. 

This we may say of a wagon of which we have ex- 
perience through the senses — every stage of its history 
is definitely fixed with reference to each stage preceding 
it and to each stage following it, everything that has 
occurred with reference to it is in itself capable of being 
traced up ; but this we cannot say of a wagon which 
exists merely as a dream. 

Nevertheless, so far as the mere appearances of things 
are concerned, it is evident that they are just the same 
in dreaming as in reality. 

The ideal realism of Lotze depends on the principle 
that seeing with the eyes is merely a consistent dream- 
ing. Matter, he contends, is composed of minds, star- 
tling as this may seem, every atom of a stick or of a 
stone, for example, being, as he supposes, a mind hav- 
ing similarity with our own. The world, as he teaches, 
exists both within and without us, and hence the name, 
ideal realism. The world exists within us, seeing it is 
but the dream occasioned in us by the joint action of 
the minds making up the universe. The world exists 
without us, seeing it is the same for everybody. 

There are four kinds of perception in addition to 
sight, namely, hearing, tasting, smelling, and handling, 
each of which resembles sight in being an imagery within 
the mind, so that we may say generally that perception 



4i PERCEPTION 

is a process of forming images in the mind on sugges- 
tions of sense. 

With the ear we directly experience but Httle, noth- 
ing in fact but the quivering of the waves of air; but 
though we directly experience so little with the ear, we 
yet from what we experience infer a great deal. Should 
we hear a machine in the darkness imitating exactly the 
human voice, we should no doubt think we were hearing 
a man talking, the reason being that we have learned 
from experience that tones and words such as the ma- 
chine might make are peculiar to humanity. We do not, 
then, in reality hear that a man talks, we merely con- 
clude that a man talks, conclude that he talks from the 
signs we have. Were this not so it would be impossible 
that we should mistake the sound of a machine for the 
voice. 

Experts in tasting teas are able to tell the qualities 
of the teas, as, for example, that a certain tea has been 
dried on copper. It would be inaccurate, however, to 
say that they taste the drying of the tea. For they do 
not taste this, but infer it, there being cerain peculiari- 
ties in the taste of the tea giving clues to reason. Men, 
moreover, do not taste that a liquor is ten years old or 
that there was a nail in the keg. This or that they 
reason out and imagine on the ground of certain sen- 
sations. 

Testing things by taste, as it is called, is in truth, for 
the most part, testing them by smell; but this is irrele- 
vant to the matter in question. 

Knowing nothing but the smell of an object, we 
imagine its qualities. For example, a man smelling 
apples in a dark cellar may in consequence know the 



PERCEPTION 43 

characteristics of them. For from their smell, perhaps, 
he knows what kind of apples they are — pippins, for 
instance. Knowing that the pippins usually sold in the 
market are of a certain size, he is able from having 
smelled them to say how large they are. It would not 
be correct, however, to say that he smells that certain 
apples are pippins or that the diameters of the apples are 
three inches. 

Julia Brace, blind, deaf, and dumb, was able by the 
sense of smell alone to distribute a whole washing as 
it came from the laundry, telling infallibly every piece, 
to whom it belonged. 

Next to sight, however, touch best exemplifies per- 
ception, how it is a process of forming images in the 
mind. We can test this for ourselves by touching some- 
thing at random in the dark. For instance, rising in 
the night and going into a room, where we touch a table, 
we know immediately what it is. When the hand no 
more than comes in contact with it we have an image 
of it in the mind; we do not have to wait to feel the 
table all over. The mind is able at once to infer and 
imagine what the object is we have touched. 

Persons who are born blind exemplify the same thing. 
For by the use of reason and imagination a blind man 
can learn to do almost anything that anybody else can 
do — learn to sew, to spin, and to weave, to make bas- 
kets, to bottom chairs, and to play the violin. Sander- 
son, although blind, was yet able to distinguish genuine 
from counterfeit medals, succeeding even where experts 
had failed, relying merely on touch. Kleinhaus, another 
blind man, chiseled out a very good statue of the Em- 
peror of Austria, as did Genabasius, still another blind 



44 PERCEPTION 

man, a statue of one of the popes. Bayle tells of a blind 
man who distinguished by touch every card in the pack, 
and played the game so dexterously that he was hard 
to beat. A blind man passing his hand over the back 
of a horse knows what the color of the horse is. Mani- 
festly, however, it would be improper to say that he feels 
what color the horse is — ^brown, bay, chestnut, or what 
not. What he feels is certain impressions merely. From 
these he reasons out and imagines what the color of the 
horse is. 

What it is possible for the mind to reason out and 
imagine from mere sensations of touch is still better 
illustrated by those who are not only blind, but deaf 
also, and perhaps dumb. Laura Bridgeman, who could 
not see or hear or speak, learned to sew, to knit, and to 
write. She was able to read by passing her fingers over 
raised letters, and was able to converse with people by 
means of signs. She knew everybody perfectly well, 
and would put out her hand at the right time to shake 
another's. 

Those whose limbs have been amputated also furnish 
examples how reason and imagination are applied to the 
impressions of sense. Certain persons who have lost 
their limbs yet feel pain in them, the effect, no doubt, 
of past experience on the mind, reason and imagination 
continuing to do their wonted work, notwithstanding the 
fact that the impressions of things on the nerves have 
ceased to exist. An apparatus having been applied to 
the stump of a man's leg twelve years after the leg had 
been taken off, the man declared that he felt the lost 
member as if it were asleep. Another man, under some- 
what similar circumstances, said that he felt pain in the 



PERCEPTION 45 

toes of his foot^ although the foot had long since been 
amputated. By the force of reason and imagination 
he felt pain in toes which he did not have. A man whose 
arm had been off for thirteen years or more declared 
that he still felt the hand as if it were in a bent and 
cramped position. A man who had lost his arm in bat- 
tle, said, twenty years subsequently, that he felt rheu- 
matism in it whenever the weather was damp. Persons 
whose legs have been removed are in the night so sure 
that they possess them that they can convince themselves 
to the contrary only by feeling for them with their hands. 

Something similar happens to persons after having 
had their teeth filled by a dentist. When they have 
retired at night they feel the working of the tools on 
their teeth, although no tools are there. The nerves 
giving the same sensations that they gave when the 
tools were applied to the teeth, reason and imagination 
construct the same perception as they constructed when 
the tools were actually applied. 

This must teach us that perception by touch, like all 
other perception, is mostly a process of inference and 
imagery, perception, in fact, being the process of form- 
ing images in the mind on intimation of the nerves, so 
that what we really perceive is, so to say, the ghosts of 
things, these ghosts, however, truly representing the 
things, how and where they are. 



CHAPTER III 

PHANTASY 

We are, doubtless, all acquainted with the process of 
dreaming, the faculty appropriate to which is called 
phantasy, but we may not be so well acquainted with 
its importance, to say nothing about understanding the 
complexity of the process. 

The subject of dreams is embraced under three heads 
— what they are, what produces them, what they them- 
selves occasion — these divisions corresponding to the 
questions, what? whence? whither? 

Dreams, considered as to what they are in themselves, 
are either perceptive or cognitive, either sleeping or 
waking, either individual or communal. 

Perceptive dreams are dreams of seeing things, of 
hearing them, of touching them, or even of tasting or of 
smelling them ; dreams of sight, however, called visions, 
being by far the most important. One may, indeed, 
dream of hearing sounds. For example, a man dreamed 
that he witnessed a sea-fight and that he could plainly 
hear the booming of guns. One may dream of touch- 
ing something. For example, a man who dreamed that 
he was wearing a velvet coat, dreamed at the same time 
that he felt it with his hand and found it smooth. Occa- 
sionally, also, one dreams of tasting or of smelling some- 
thing. Whenever we dream of perceiving anything, in 
short, the dream is perceptive — there is a representation 

46 



PHANTASY 47 

to the mind just as there is when we directly perceive 
anything. 

Cognitive dreams, on the other hand, are dreams of 
memory or thought, such dreams consisting not in what 
we seem to see, to hear, to touch, and the hke, but 
merely in what we assume to be true, we dreaming that 
something has taken place, whether it has or not; that 
something is so, without regard to the truth of it. For 
example, it is related by a man that he frequently dreams 
that he once had a very good dinner in a certain restau- 
rant. He never had any such dinner there, however — 
the restaurant does not even exist. His dream is merely 
a representation of memory or thought. 

This distinction between perceptive and cognitive 
dreams is of the greatest importance. For by it we are 
made aware, right at the beginning, that the dreaming 
process is much more complex than we might have sus- 
pected it to be. 

We are not to understand, however, that one of these 
kinds of dreams necessarily takes place apart from the 
other. As a matter of fact, they are usually blended 
with each other. 

The second distinction to be made in dreams is the 
distinction between those which occur in our sleep and 
those which occur in our waking. The former being 
well understood, it is necessary only to speak of the 
latter. 

We have an example o£ a perceptive dream in waking 
hours given in the experience of Nicolai, a certain Ger- 
man writer. For he distinctly saw by day, as he says, 
men and women who followed him about whithersoever 
he went, conversing with him and with one another, 



48 PHANTASY 

although no men and women were present, as he was 
able to prove by experiments which he made. If it be 
held that persons in this condition are really asleep, or, 
perhaps, as it would be preferable to say, are under the 
power of hypnosis — this, if true, little alters the case — 
we speak only after the popular fashion. The dreamer 
really acts just as people do when they are awake — he 
walks around, performs various actions, engages in con- 
versation — he is not asleep in the sense in which one is 
asleep in bed. If he is technically asleep, this, as was 
said, little alters the case. 

An example of a cognitive dream occurring when one 
is awake is furnished by the experience of a boy who 
was oppressed with a fever. He verily believed that 
just outside the bedroom door was the highway and 
that there to a gate he had a horse tied. He thought 
he had been ploughing in the field. The fact, however, 
was that he had never used a horse in his whole life. 
He was merely dreaming when he was awake — at least, 
when he and others supposed that he was awake. 

We have in the fact of persons' dreaming, when seem- 
ingly awake, one of the explanations made of their see- 
ing ghosts, as the same are called, what they see being, 
on this theory, only their dream. It is related, for 
example, of a certain boy that, having gone to bed in 
a dimly lighted bedroom, he saw standing against the 
wall, or moving about, gayly dressed men and women, 
the appearance being to him of an evening party. No- 
ticing that his mother, who was putting him to bed, did 
not see them, he supposed himself to be possessed of 
some power of mind superior to hers. She, on the con- 
trary, when he called her attention to the presence of 



PHANTASY 49 

men and women in the room, thought him Hght-headed 
or at best trifling. 

A woman, sitting in the twihght of her parlor one 
evening, saw for a few moments, and for a few moments 
only, what in every respect resembled her deceased sister. 
She particularly noticed the long golden hair which her 
sister had worn when living. She was dreaming, as we 
suppose. 

What has often happened is this : a man, having gone 
to bed, is visited by a deceased relative, who stands at 
the foot of the bed and converses with him. He, indeed, 
thinks he is conversing with a deceased relative, the 
truth being, however, that he is merely dreaming that he 
is doing so, dreaming that he is doing so when he is 
awake, or, at least, when he thinks he is awake. 

If it be objected that not all cases of seeing ghosts 
are to be accounted for on the principle appealed to, this 
is nothing to the purpose. The point is that some cases 
of seeing ghosts are thus to be accounted for. 

The third distinction in dreams, and, as it seems, the 
last which needs to be taken account of, is the distinc- 
tion between dreams which are individual and those 
which are communal, it being here necessary, however, 
to refer only to the latter. 

Two or more persons may dream the same thing, 
either when asleep or when awake. 

A family aroused, as they supposed, from their slum- 
bers in the dead of night, found the house lighted up 
and strange-looking creatures moving about, all of which 
resembled in appearance the traditional form of the devil. 
These beings compelled the whole family to get out of 
bed, and continued for a long time to terrify them, even 



50 PHANTASY 

passing their hands over the face of each. Finally, 
however, they put the whole family to bed again and 
extinguished the lights. Nobody dared to stir till it was 
broad daylight, when, getting up one by one and look- 
ing around, they could discover no clue to what had 
happened in the night, except that they smelled sulphur. 
Sulphur had accidentally gotten upon the stove. It was 
the smell of this which had set the whole family to 
dreaming the same thing at the same time. As a matter 
of fact, they had not been out of their beds the whole 
night. 

An example of more than one person dreaming the 
same thing when awake may also be given. During the 
night a lady, perceiving that there was a woman in white 
rocking the cradle in which her child was sleeping, fran- 
tically shook her maid to get her up, whereupon her maid 
merely said, " Don't I see it, too," the woman in white 
that instant passing out of the window, notwithstanding 
the fact also that it was closed. The theory is that the 
lady and her maid dreamed the same thing at the same 
time, and when awake, or at least when they supposed 
they were awake. 

On the basis of such occurrences as these it has been 
sought to account for haunted houses, for the miracles 
which the Hindoos perform, and even for the appear- 
ances in seances. 

The principle on which haunted houses are explained, 
supposing that the appearances there are nothing but the 
dreams which one or m.ore persons have, is that a per- 
son having in that house some time or other been sub- 
jected to great mental strain, a knowledge of which he 
wished others to possess, his experience was thereby im- 



PHANTASY 51 

pressed on the mind of everybody in the universe. Peo- 
ple in general, to be sure, know nothing about this, but 
when any one of them comes to stay in the house, or 
possibly merely to visit it, certain circumstances con- 
nected with the house call out the original impression 
which the man dying there made on the subconscious 
mind, causing one to dream the very same thing, and it 
may be when he is awake, which the person in that house 
so long ago experienced. 

It is no objection to this theory to say that it is absurd 
that people should have stored away in the memory what 
they know nothing of, since it is easily proved that they 
do have such things stored away in memory; things 
which they have not thought of for a generation, indeed, 
may suddenly rise into their consciousness — persons who 
had entirely forgotten a language, for example, have 
been known to speak it in the delirium of death ; persons 
have even spoken in an unknown tongue that which was 
unconsciously contained in the memory. 

The miracles of the Hindoos, moreover, could be 
accounted for if we might suppose that they are noth- 
ing but the dream which several persons at the same 
time have, there, in fact, being no miracle at all, only 
what appears to be such. It is reported, for example, 
that a certain Hindoo, having gathered a crowd of peo- 
ple around him, made them an address, after which, tak- 
ing a rope in his hand, he threw it into the air, the rope, 
strangely enough, standing straight up and down, the 
one end in the clouds, the other just above his head. 
Seizing the rope, he climbed it, pulling it up after him, 
till he was actually lost to view, having, as the bystand- 
ers believed, made his ascent to heaven. Those who 



52 PHANTASY 

witnessed the performance declared that, at least, it 
appeared just as if all this took place, however difficult 
it might be to believe that such was actually the case. 

That what people see the Hindoos perform cannot 
possibly be real is manifest from this, that performers 
often proceed even to dismember a man, apparently sever 
his head from his body and the like, yet shortly after- 
ward produce the man alive and well. 

As was said also, one explanation of the appearances 
of spirits, as the same are called, at seances, is that 
they are nothing but the dreams which the several per- 
sons gathered together there have in common. For 
example, a man who attended a seance for the first time 
saw there, as he verily believed, his deceased brother, 
the same wearing the long beard which was peculiar to 
him in life. This, in truth, is what he saw, but how 
could he say that he was not dreaming, since if he were 
dreaming everything must have seemed to him just as 
if it were real, the same in fact as things appear to us 
in the dreams of our sleep? We do not doubt their 
reality. Something like this at any rate is the argument 
used, and of course should be taken for what it is worth. 

Three main theories, it may be said, obtain in refer- 
ence to spiritualism, the first of which is that the phe- 
nomena are altogether due to sleight-of-hand, the 
medium always deceiving the people, the objection to 
which is that it makes too great drafts upon our cre- 
dulity, we being obliged to suppose wilful deception on 
the part of so many apparently candid persons. More- 
over, it is strongly objected to this theory that there are 
occurrences at seances not capable of explanation merely 
on the hypothesis of sleight-of-hand. The second theory, 



PHANTASY S3 

that the phenomena are due to departed spirits, has the 
objection that not sufficient intelHgence is manifest in 
the doings and sayings of the would-be spirits, an objec- 
tion, of course, possibly admitting of explanation so as 
greatly to diminish its force. The third theory is that 
the phenomena are to be explained out of dreams, either 
that they are nothing but dreams or that they are dreams 
which are in some sort materialized and embodied. 
According to this latter theory the mediums are de- 
ceived, not deceiving, either taking as objective what is 
merely subjective or as assigning to the phenomena the 
wrong cause. 

The fact that ghosts of the living as well as ghosts 
of the dead have been seen is adduced in support that 
the spirits at seances may not be real ones, the ghost 
of a living person being, we should suppose, only our 
mental representation of it. Pythagoras, we are in- 
formed, was seen at the same time in two different 
towns, one of these appearances of him manifestly 
being nothing but his ghost — not his departed spirit, 
inasmuch as he had not yet departed this life. At any 
rate, it would seem to follow that the seeing of a ghost 
does not necessarily prove that the same is in fact a 
spirit. 

Dreams in themselves considered, then, are either 
perceptive or cognitive, either sleeping or waking, and 
either individual or communal. 

Moreover, to dreams of all kinds two characteristics 
attach which give them great importance, the first that 
they have significance and the second that they are taken 
as realities. 

The ordinary and the extraordinary meaning of dreams 



54 PHANTASY 

have to be noticed, the ordinary meaning of dreams not 
usually receiving the attention due it. 

To understand what is meant by the ordinary mean- 
ing of dreams we have need to take a hint from figura- 
tive language. For example, we read without surprise 
that Joseph was a fruitful bough, although it is plain 
that Joseph being a tribe of men could not have been 
the limb of a tree. We understand, moreover, what is 
meant when we read that the Pharisees were a genera- 
tion of vipers, although plainly being men they could 
not be snakes. Now the ordinary meaning of dreams 
is figurative, the same as this language. This, then, is 
the usual significance of dreams — they indicate to the 
mind bodily states or states of what is somehow con- 
nected with the body. Suffering from a fever, a man 
perhaps dreams that somebody is pouring hot water on 
him; suffering from indigestion, he dreams perhaps that 
a mountain is upon his stomach. 

The extraordinary meaning of dreams is that which 
is more commonly made account of, though it would, 
doubtless, be better to consider it merely as an adjunct 
of the main meaning of dreams. 

The extraordinary meaning of dreams is of three 
kinds — that pertaining to things, that pertaining to space, 
and that pertaining to time. 

To take the first case, it is true that some special in- 
sight into things is occasionally gained by means of 
dreams. Coleridge, for example, having taken an ano- 
dyne, dreamed out that poem of his known as Kubla 
Khan. Franklin declared that he gained much political 
insight from dreams. His example, indeed, makes us 
wish that politicians nowadays might give more heed 



PHANTASY 55 

to dreams. Tartini, the musician, dreamed that the 
devil appeared to him, and in exchange for his soul com- 
posed him a piece of music which is known to this day 
by the appropriate title of the Devil's Sonata, Tartini 
having remembered it and written it out. 

To take the second case, the significance of dreams 
as regards space — it has reference to knowing things at 
a distance. Thus, on the day of the battle of Pharsalia, 
a man by the name of Cornelius, at Padua, more than a 
hundred miles from the scene of action — such is the 
account — described the battle correctly in every detail as 
it proceeded, seeing the whole thing in a dream, when 
at the time he was awake or seemingly so. Swedenborg, 
relying on a waking dream, correctly described a fire 
which was raging at Stockholm, although he was at 
Gothenburg, far away. Major Andre's sister, residing 
in England, saw in a dream the court-martial which 
condemned her brother, clearly distinguishing in it 
Washington and Knox, though she had never seen 
these men, she afterward learning from pictures that 
her vision was correct. 

To take the third case, the significance of dreams as 
regards time, it has reference in the first place to what 
is past and gone. For example, Zschokke, the Swiss 
writer, tells us that whenever he saw anybody he saw 
also at the same time and as it were in a dream and 
by signs seeming to surround the mouth everything 
which that person had ever done. Sangster recounts 
that a deceased woman appeared to him looking the same 
and dressed exactly as she was represented in a picture 
which was about the house. The tinker of Swaffham, 
we are told, dreamed that if he would go to London 



56 PHANTASY 

Bridge and stand at a certain place upon it, somebody 
there would tell him something of great importance to 
him. Following out this dream, he was actually told 
by a man at that place upon the bridge that he had 
dreamed himself that there was a chest of money buried 
under an old apple-tree well known to the tinker in his 
native town, but that he had no faith in dreams himself, 
being a man of common-sense. The tinker, however, 
going home — such is the story — dug in the spot and 
found the money. 

The significance of dreams as regards time has, in the 
second place, reference to the future. We read, for 
example, that Joseph, having been warned of God in a 
dream, fled into Egypt, thus saving the young Saviour's 
life. Schopenhauer's servant dreamed of cleaning up 
ink from the floor the night before she was called upon 
to do it. Goethe in a waking dream beheld himself in 
a certain attire riding horseback along the road to Stras- 
burg, his dream being literally realized eight years 
afterward. 

Much more talked about, however, are premonitions 
of approaching death. Families, as we know, have their 
own sign to indicate to them the impending decease of 
a relative, the white woman, for example, being such 
in the case of the Hohenzollerns. Voss relates how a 
servant of one of his friends always knew when any- 
body was going to die by seeming to see, as if in a 
dream, certain shadowy creatures following him about 
everywhere, as if with intent to destroy him. A case 
even is on record in which the death of a person and 
all the circumstances of the funeral were correctly 
foretold. 



PHANTASY 57 

The second general characteristic attaching to dreams, 
to give them great importance, is the fact that we usu- 
ally take them as realities. 

If our dream be a vision, we just as much believe 
that we see what we suppose we see as if in reality we 
saw it — not always so, of course, but usually. One 
dreams, for example, that he is out walking of a sum- 
mer's day — the sun is shining brightly, the trees are 
loaded with leaves, the grass is green, horses, sheep, 
and cattle are feeding on the meadow. Now what he 
supposes all the time is that he actually sees all these 
things. The horses, for example, he thinks are real 
horses. He is not convinced of the contrary, indeed, 
till he awakes. 

If the dream be one of thinking merely, and no 
vision at all, what he thinks in his dream he verily sup- 
poses to be fact, as, for instance, that he is fallen heir 
to a large fortune. 

Now, from the circumstance that dreams have sig- 
nificance, it follows that they must be connected with 
certain causes, and from the fact that they are taken 
as realities it follows that they may control our actions. 
We have, therefore, still to consider what produces 
dreams, and what they themselves occasion, thus com- 
pleting our survey of them. 

The production of dreams is occasioned either by 
physical or by mental causes, the latter, moreover, 
being another's will or our own. 

Among physical means of producing dreams are drugs, 
disease, fasting, heat, and light — these, although there 
are many more. 

Preparations of a certain kind of hemp, when taken 



5 8 PHANTASY 

info the system, have the effect to make one dream 
of diversified landscapes; he really thinks that he 
is looking on meadows, hills, and vales, the same 
covered with grass, flowers, and weeds, with here and 
there rocks and streams interspersed. A man, having 
taken a good dose of valerian, saw on retiring to rest, 
and while he was still awake, a lake before him in which 
were fifty or more boys bathing, distinctly distinguish- 
ing the features of each. Opium has a similar effect, as 
most everybody knows from the case of De Quincey. 
Having used this drug, he saw stairs towering into the 
heavens and others descending into the earth, saw pal- 
aces the corners of which rested on mountains and the 
vast doors of which were festooned with clouds. More- 
over, he seemed to spend infinite ages with crocodiles 
and other loathsome animals. 

Delirium tremens is a disease which, when one has it, 
causes him to see snakes and insects just as if they are 
real, although no snakes nor insects are at hand, A 
small boy overcome by a fever said that he saw on a 
rose-bush, just outside the window, a little white dog, 
the fact being, however, that no such dog was anywhere 
about the place. A man who suffered from a fever said 
that to him the walls of his room appeared to be cov- 
ered with drifting sand, over which were passing all 
kinds of animals of diminutive size. 

Mahomet, having fasted much, saw things when 
awake just as we see them when asleep. He saw, for 
example, something like a shadow enter his room, 
although his wife, who was with him, could not perceive 
any such thing. St. Anthony, from habitual fasting, 
came to see strange visions. Creatures of every descrip- 
tion seemed to him to enter his room — lions, panthers, 



PHANTASY 59 

bears, and wolves. What he took to be the devil 
approached him, handing him a silver dish which, as he 
took it in his hand, vanished into smoke. He was 
dreaming when he was awake, we suppose, nothing 
more. Luther, in the Wartburg, from a similar cause, 
saw, as he believed, the devil, and threw at him his 
ink-bottle, bespattering the wall in the place, which is 
still shown to tourists. 

How a heated room will make one dream everybody 
must have observed ; even too much covering on the bed 
will do the same thing. 

Light reflected from smooth surfaces is a physical 
means to make us dream. We have the case of crystal- 
gazers, as they are called, who put themselves to dream- 
ing by looking into water-bottles or other glassware. 
Their dream is directed by the reflections of color and 
form upon the interior surface of the glass. It is re- 
corded that in a certain Grecian temple there was a 
well in the bottom of which was a mirror. The priestess 
looking into this well saw in the glass an image of the 
absent sick person, a cure for whom was being sought. 
Gazing on the glass, we may suppose, had the effect to 
make her dream. It was the image in her vision which 
she saw. We have all heard the queer story regarding 
Abraham Lincoln, that standing before his looking-glass 
after his first nomination, which was made at Chicago, 
he saw two images of himself, the front one bright, the 
one behind it pale, and that subsequently in his life he 
saw the same thing again, perhaps several times ; that he 
believed the bright image to represent his past career, 
the pale one to represent his future. He believed he 
would not live to see the end of his term of ofiice. This, 



6o PHANTASY 

experience of his is explained on the ground that gazing 
on the glass caused him to dream, though he was awake, 
or at least seemingly awake. He saw two conditions 
of himself in that baseless fabric of a vision. It is said 
that in Egypt there is a society which has existed for 
forty centuries, the successive members of which have 
produced in themselves dreaming by gazing on porce- 
lain. They have triangles drawn on a porcelain plate 
and certain words inscribed upon it, and to make the 
plate more shiny they oil it. 

We come now to the mental means of putting one to 
dreaming, the actions of others or of one's self. 

The means by which one person puts another to 
dreaming are either objective or subjective, the objec- 
tive means being what he says or does. 

For example, the operator says to the person who is 
to be hypnotized, " Think of nothing but that you are 
going to sleep; your eyelids are now closing, your eyes 
are getting tired, you feel weary all over; you are now 
sound asleep." The patient comes thus to be in the 
dream state, and when in that state his dream can be 
directed by the operator, that is to say, he will dream 
anything the operator suggests to him to dream. 

A hypnotized patient told that there is a bird on the 
table where there is none, not only sees a bird on the 
table, but also the image of the bird in the looking-glass 
on that table. Told that the picture of a certain person 
is on a piece of blank paper, he sees the picture on that 
piece of paper, but only on the side of it on which he 
was told that the picture was. If the paper is taken 
away and then brought back, the other side up, he sees 
no picture on it at all. 



PHANTASY 6 1 

Persons hypnotized also have their dream directed by 
putting them in certain attitudes, as, for example, put- 
ting them in the attitude of drinking may make them 
drink, and the like. 

The subjective means by which one puts another to 
dreaming is the mere use of his own thought and will, 
without any apparently outward signs. Some of us in 
our childhood were made to wonder much at what was 
related of a crazy man, that, though he was kept in a 
separate room of the house confined or under watch, he 
would yet repeat what persons in other rooms said in 
a very low tone, and even what they merely thought 
and did not utter at all. We have the explanation in 
this that the thoughts of others were transferred to his 
mind, thus suggesting ideas which, as it were, directed 
his dreaming. 

We have also the case of controlling hypnotized pa- 
tients in that the company all think of the same thing 
for a time, when it is found that the patient dreams it. 
For example, in the presence of a hypnotized woman, 
the company by agreement kept in their minds the 
thought that the woman would see her hat the color of 
red, although it was really of some other color. She 
did actually see it red, we are told, and could not be- 
lieve it was hers. 

Certain persons have power to put themselves to 
dreaming, at least on certain subjects. Painters make 
use of this gift. For example, Dore saw, as it were in 
a dream, the pictures which he wished to paint. Was, 
for instance, a man to be represented in the act of leap- 
ing, Dore in his self-induced dream saw the man in 
that attitude. We are to understand that what he saw 



62 PHANTASY 

was not the scheme of a picture, such as any of us may- 
have before the mind, but that what he saw in his wak- 
ing dream looked exactly like the object which we 
behold with our eyes when we perceive a man in the 
attitude of leaping. It was related by a certain painter 
that, wishing to portray an ideal woman, he dreamed 
one sitting before him in a chair, then, watching his 
dream closely, he took a brush in his hand and depicted 
the woman on the canvas. French schools make it a 
part of the instruction in painting to teach pupils how 
to dream. The voluntary production of the ghosts of 
persons is not so rare an occurrence as we might sup- 
pose it to be, but it may seem strange that a man should 
have the power to make his own ghost appear before 
him, as Brosius, a physician of Bendorf, a town of Ger- 
many, is said to have done. Such a man could paint 
his own picture without the aid of a sketch and without 
looking into a mirror. Beethoven, even after he was 
deaf, it is said, could yet dream how any music would 
sound, doing so when he was awake. Ole Bull was 
accustomed to say that the music of his violin existed in 
his mind before he played it. When Poe was writing 
his Raven, a poem esteemed the best which has been 
produced in the New World, he made himself dream, 
we are told, the scenes represented in it. Sitting under 
a lamp-post in New York, he told a friend of his that 
at that very instant he could see a raven and could even 
hear it croak. Flaubert, the French novelist, relates 
that he dreamed his characters so vividly that they had 
to him all the semblance of reality. We are told of a 
negro preacher who so perfectly portrayed an inferno 
as to come to believe in its reality himself — for, pausing 



PHANTASY 63 

in the midst of his discourse, he wailed long and loud 
over the state of the lost. Men have played chess by 
dreaming, the player sitting with his back to the board, 
perhaps also with his hand over his eyes. The moves 
on the real chess-board are made by an assistant as the 
player directs him. The player looks merely on the 
board which he has in his dream — upon this board, in- 
deed, it is that he plays the game. We are told of a 
man who could in this fashion play twenty games of 
chess, all at the same time, every stage of each of these 
games standing before his mind, not as a scheme, but 
as if it were real, just as we behold something similar 
in the dreams of our sleep. 

We observe somewhat the same thing in the case 
of psychometrical demonstrations, as they are some- 
times called. Taking articles in his hands, the medium 
tells to what sort of persons they belong, what scenes 
have been associated with them, and the like. Taking 
a watch and chain, for example, not knowing whence 
it came, after looking at it a little while and feeling it 
carefully, he proceeds to tell the appearance and char- 
acter of the person to whom it belonged and to trace 
out the history of the same. Much the same thing is 
often done without the use of the articles. The medium 
tells, for example, that such a person, whom he points 
out in the assemblage, has lost such and such relatives 
by death, that they were such and such like persons, per- 
haps even gives some minute details which could not 
have been known to him personally. 

He, indeed, claims to have this knowledge from de- 
parted spirits — and this is one theory of the case^ — 
though it seems possible that he gets his knowledge 
telepathically by seeing into the minds of others. 



64 PHANTASY 

So far the cases given of dreams induced by one's 
self have been those in which the person is aware that 
he is dreaming, but there are other cases in which he is 
not aware of it. Certain persons are able to put them- 
selves into a trance, in which state they dream and give 
an account of what they dream, but when they come 
out of the trance they do not remember what they have 
dreamed any more than we remember much of what 
we have dreamed in our sleep. For example, a woman, 
being in a trance, a piece of marble from the ruins of 
Pompeii was placed upon her head, when, it is said, she 
described the house of which this piece of marble had, 
about two thousand years ago, formed a part, the in- 
mates, who they were, what their customs and manners 
were, even their dress. 

Persons in this condition take the dreams which they 
have produced for realities; any object which they seem 
to see they take to be a veritable one. They may, there- 
fore, even act in accordance with what they seem to see. 

This indeed brings us to the third and last grand 
division of our subject — for the direction of our volun- 
tary actions by our dreams means that we act in accord- 
ance with them, just as we act in accordance with the 
perceptions of sense. We have it illustrated in som- 
nambulism, in hypnosis, and in insanity. 

As regards somnambulism, the case of persons getting 
up in their sleep and going out on the roof of a house 
is the best known example. Such persons are guided 
by their dream, the same as a carpenter going out on 
the roof of a house is guided by his perception. At 
least in part the somnambulist is actuated by his dream. 
We have the case of a young woman who was trying 



PHANTASY 65 

to win a prize in painting, and consequently had her 
mind greatly exercised over it. She discovered that 
somebody was adding touches to her picture in the 
night. A watch being set, it was found that it was she 
herself who did the work. She would get up in her 
sleep, paint a while, then go back to bed, and know 
nothing about it in the morning. We have also the case 
of a young preacher who worked at his sermons this 
way. It was found that if a pasteboard was placed 
between his eyes and the page he could read just as well 
as before, presumably because he was reading out of his 
own mind, and not off the page at all. What is still 
stranger, we have the case of a man who would get up 
in the night and rob his own hen-roost, knowing noth- 
ing about it in the morning. 

We are to understand that these are all cases of 
dreams getting into action — the dream is not only taken 
as a reality, but is actually put into practice. The be- 
ginning of something of this nature can be traced in us 
all, especially when we have been hard at work on a 
task. We in our sleep constantly think of it and seem 
to ourselves to be still working at it. A boy who, in 
the hot sun, loaded sheaves of oats all day, on going 
to sleep at night dreamed all the while of still loading 
sheaves of oats. Had his dream been even more intense 
the probability is that he would have gotten up and 
gone into the field and would actually have handled the 
sheaves. Indeed, a case is known of a man who did 
this very thing. 

Hypnosis somewhat resembles somnambulism, the 
great difference being that it is artificially induced, or 
at least often so. When hypnotized patients are told 



66 PHANTASY 

that mosquitos are biting them, they go through the 
motions of brushing off mosquitos, plainly showing that 
they are acting out a dream, no mosquitos really being 
about them. Told that they are in the midst of a flower- 
garden, they get down on the floor and go through the 
motions of picking flowers, calling them pinks, lilies, or 
what not, just as suggested. Told that it is cold, they 
shiver; told that it is raining, they get under cover. 

It is possible that witchcraft is merely a case of a 
person hypnotized and set to doing and believing absurd 
things. An example, doubtless familiar to all, may be 
cited. Against the express wish of his wife, a man, we 
are told, persisted in going with some associates on a 
hunt. They were surprised that a fine-looking deer 
which circled around them could not be hit by any of 
the party. The man, at last, cut from his coat a silver 
button, which he put into his gun and fired at the deer. 
The result was that the deer was wounded by it and 
fled away. Reaching home at night he found his wife 
in bed wounded exactly as the deer had been wounded, 
the theory being that the woman, having transformed 
herself into a deer to be shot out of spite, had then 
retransformed herself into a woman, exercising the 
powers of a witch. This, considered as a matter of 
fact, we are sure could never have happened, but con- 
sidered as a waking dream which several persons had 
in common, and in accordance with which they per- 
formed certain actions, it may well enough have taken 
place. If we suppose the woman, as well as the men, 
to have been hypnotized by a witch, the whole transac- 
tion, although a dream, may yet have had the appear- 
ance of a reality. For witches may have been able to 



PHANTASY 67 

make several persons dream the same thing at the same 
time, and not only so, but also to make them regulate 
their actions by it, so that they should think that things 
happened to them in common which did not. 

Nineteen persons, under the persecution of Cotton 
Mather, were hanged for witchcraft on Gallows Hill, 
Salem, Mass., a thing which is often made subject of 
lament. The traveler standing at the grave of Mather 
on Copp's Hill, Boston, to-day, muses on what he deems 
that man's misguided action. For all we know to the con- 
trary, however, many, if not even all, of those who were 
hanged may have been veritable witches, persons who, 
out of malice, hypnotized others to make them trouble. 
The witchcraft of Salem, for all that anybody can show 
to the contrary, may have been a matter of fact. When 
the nature of hypnotism was not understood, it was easy 
for people to suppose that the power which certain per- 
sons exercised over others was due to their league with 
the devil. 

To maintain the reality of witchcraft it would, doubt- 
less, be necessary to assume that one person may under 
certain circumstances hypnotize others at a distance, even 
at a long distance; it would, in other words, be neces- 
sary to assume what is called telepathy, a thing which 
has before been alluded to. 

Insanity is a sort of continuous somnambulism, a sort 
of natural hypnosis, though it is admitted that these 
expressions do not fully describe it. The insane man, 
though wide-awake, or at least apparently so, acts under 
the delusion of a dream, his dream being largely cog- 
nitive, though also often perceptive; that is to say, he 
thinks false things mostly perhaps, yet often sees and 
experiences what is not at hand. 



68 PHANTASY 

We are more familiar, doubtless, v/ith the msanity of 
some individual rather than with that of a community, 
though both kinds of insanity exist, the individual and 
the communal. 

A man who was becoming insane, to take the case 
of an individual, tied his cow behind his carriage and 
drove rapidly to the neighboring town, giving as his 
reason for so doing that his cow, although she had now 
reached an advanced age, had yet never seen that place. 
He was, we may suppose, but acting out a dream 
which possessed him. The dream, too, was a dream of 
thought merely — he thought things to be as they are not. 

Taine gives an account of a man who attempted to 
get away from robbers, complained, indeed, that they 
pounded him almost to death, although, as a matter of 
fact, nobody was near him nor was doing him any harm. 
He had but been dreaming when he was awake, and so 
vividly, moreover, as to take his dream for a reality. 
What was more, he had proceeded to act in accordance 
with what he dreamed. 

W^e have also the ludicrous example of a man who 
pounded himself continually, thinking it was somebody 
else. He could not endure, he said, the insults which 
that man offered him. 

Crazy persons, as was said, may not only be under 
a delusion of thought, but also under a delusion of per- 
ception, see things which are not present, hear sounds — 
indeed, exist in a world altogether different from that 
in which we conduct our affairs. Cases enough are on 
record in which a person is visited by the dead, who tell 
him what to do — commit murder and the like — all of 
which he takes in sober earnest, though it be nothing 



PHANTASY 69 

but a dream. We are thus able to account for the hor- 
rible things which certain insane persons perform and 
to understand why it is necessary to keep them in close 
confinement. 

What is called communal insanity also exists, or at 
least has existed, an insanity in which several persons 
participate. 

For example, during the Middle Ages people had g 
mania for dancing in concert. They would gather in 
public places for this purpose; screaming and foaming, 
they would dance till they fell in utter exhaustion, when 
they would groan as if they were dying. While they 
were in these acts they were insensible to all other im- 
pressions than those connected with what they were 
doing. They thought of nothing but the dream which 
they had in common and which in common they acted 
out. 

There were in the Middle Ages, also, what we call 
were-wolves. Men and women dreamed — and when 
awake — that they were wolves — dreamed it in common 
and in common acted it out. They took to the woods 
in bands, walked on all-fours, howled and hunted. They 
killed and devoured not only animals, but also children. 
It was in some cases found necessary to destroy them, 
as if, indeed, they had been wolves. 

What is observed in a speaker's influencing an audi- 
ence is, perhaps, a mild form of the communal acting 
out of a dream. Punshon, the great preacher, for ex- 
ample, so roused the people before whom he spoke at a 
conference that they all rose to their feet, shouted, and 
waved their handkerchiefs. He is said to have mag- 
netized them, which probably means no more than that 



70 PHANTASY 

he caused them in a measure to dream, and what they 
dreamed to act in accordance with. They were led to 
attach an exaggerated importance to something, and in 
accordance with their false assumptions to act. No one 
reading by himself what Punshon said would have con- 
ducted himself in such a manner. 

So far account has been taken only of the influence 
of dreams on what are usually called our voluntary 
actions, but it seems that they may also have influence 
on what are called our involuntary actions, on the organic 
functions of the body. 

A patient whose limb was amputated felt no pain 
during the operation from the fact that, previous to it, 
he had been hypnotized and then told that he would 
feel no pain. Here a delusion in the mind had the effect 
to suspend the ordinary results from the action of the 
nerves. What, indeed, could better illustrate the power 
of a dream? 

The cure of many diseases, it is claimed, can be 
effected by means of hypnosis, this meaning that the 
patient is put to dreaming and that his dreams have an 
effect on the body for the better. Persons suffering 
from a mania for intoxicating drinks have been cured 
by being hypnotized, and when in that state told to 
abstain from liquor. Those subject to maniacal attacks 
have been cured by a similar process. For example, a 
girl in such a condition that it required five nurses to 
control her was hypnotized after several hours of effort, 
her eyelids being held open so that she was compelled 
to gaze at a magnesium light. Once got to dreaming, 
she was kept in the state nearly all the while for weeks, 
being taken out of the hypnosis only a half-hour daily. 



PHANTASY 71 

She was cured by this process. The operator had power 
to cast out devils, had them dreamed out, we might say, 
really used dreams to modify the organic structure of 
the brain. 

It is said that even laziness has been cured by a like 
means. A boy who stood at the foot of his class be- 
cause he could not apply himself to his tasks, having 
been hypnotized, was commanded to learn his lessons. 
Brought out of the hypnosis, he made such diligent 
application of his powers that he very soon reached a 
high grade. 

Allusion has been made by Rosenkranz to the hope- 
lessness of trying to educate idiots, but it seems that 
even they yield to hypnosis. An idiot, it is said, who 
could not learn to write was able after hypnotic treat- 
ment to make the entire alphabet, having gotten power 
over his muscles by the aid of his dreams. 

If dreams can modify the human body, the question 
arises whether they can also have an effect on matter 
outside of the body, as, indeed, some have claimed. It 
is asserted, for example, that persons by the mind have 
been able to move the needle of a compass. It is claimed 
that a man in India can by his mind write a letter on 
a sheet of paper which is in another man's desk in 
America, such being called a precipitated letter. 

It remains to be asked whether the materializations 
of spirits, as they are called, are anything but the pa- 
tient's dream made to embody itself. Are, indeed, levi- 
tation, table-tipping, and the like explainable on these 
grounds ? 



CHAPTER IV 

MEMORY 

It being admitted that memory depends on conditions, 
the question arises what are those conditions ? Not only 
so, but what are all of those conditions? Primarily the 
conditions of memory are (i) the person himself, (2) 
his circumstances, (3) and things in general. The per- 
son himself includes two conditions of memory, health 
and aptitude; but what conditions of memory, we may 
ask, are included in things themselves? The aspects of 
things in general are quality, quantity, and relation, but 
we have here to consider quality only quantitatively, 
what its intensity is, so that the aspects of things in 
general reduce for us to quantity and to relation. Three 
kinds of quantity exist, that of intensity, that of space, 
and that of time. All the conditions of memory, there- 
fore, are health, aptitude, intensity, space, time, and 
relation. 

We might reduce the statement to this : the condi- 
tions of memory in their entirety are, first, the person 
himself; secondly, his circumstances; thirdly, the inten- 
sity of things ; fourthly, space and time ; and, fifthly, the 
relations of things. 

This classification, no doubt, is exhaustive, seeing that, 
beside the person and his circumstances, all there is 
anyhow to influence the memory is things, these, more- 

72 



MEMORY 73 

over, having intensity of quality, being in space and 
time, and standing in relation to one another. 

It is plain that the person consists of body and of 
mind. The main question with regard to the body is 
health, with regard to the mind is aptitude. The first 
thing to consider, then, so far as the person is concerned, 
is the state of his health. This condition of memory 
seems to depend on the connection which things to be 
remembered have with the brain. Traces of sensations, 
it is supposed, are always or usually left in the brain, 
these traces being the means by which we call up events. 
One trace is connected with another, consequently, get- 
ting intimation of one thing, we thereby get intimation 
of others — this is the theory. 

According to this view much is stored away in the 
brain, possibly everything of which we have ever had 
any impression, many examples, indeed, being adduced 
to show this. A boy whose skull was opened by a sur- 
geon was wholly unconscious at the time of the opera- 
tion, but remembered all about it four years afterward 
when in a delirium of fever. He even told who were, 
two years before, present at the operation and how each 
of them was dressed. An even more remarkable case is 
this : a clergyman being in the habit of reading aloud 
every day Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, was overheard 
by a woman who was at work about his house. She 
understood nothing of what he read, not knowing the 
languages. Many years afterward, however, when 
seized of a fever and wholly unconscious, she repeated, 
greatly to the surprise of those who heard her, the very 
same passages that the clergyman had so long before 
read in her hearing. A man who was leisurely resting 



74 MEMORY 

his fingers over the muzzle of his gun, when it was dis- 
charged in consequence of a dog's running against the 
lock, said that in the brief time elapsing between the 
dog's striking the gun and the discharge of it all his 
past conduct stood before him, the Lamb's Book of 
Life, as it were. 

We have not, perhaps, sufficiently taken into account 
what a remarkable thing memory is. A man sitting by 
his fireside of a winter's evening relates how, fifty years 
ago, his sister drew him upon a little wagon along a 
certain well-known road. He describes the little wagon 
in all of its details — the wheels sawed out of a board, 
holes through them for the axle, the narrow box, the 
tongue with its cross-piece. Nobody but himself pre- 
tends to know anything about that little wagon, not 
even the sister who he says drew him upon it. No part 
or vestige of that little wagon can now be found. Not- 
withstanding all this, he still insists on the truth of what 
he says. 

This is as wonderful as the claim of St. John to have 
been relating things which must shortly come to pass. 
For it is nowise stranger that one should know the 
future than it is that he should know the past, seeing 
that we are always but in the present time. 

The brain, as was said, is a machine of the mind, 
possibly somewhat on the principle of a graphophone, 
having in itself traces of whatsoever has happened in 
the experience of the person. How it is, then, that the 
state of the health should have an influence on the mem- 
ory is comprehensible. 

The second thing to consider, so far as the person is 
concerned, is what aptitude he was born with. Great 



MEMORY 75 

memories are, no doubt, in part to be explained on this 
principle, as, for example, extraordinary memories of 
faces, of places, of details, of accounts, of words, of dis- 
course, and of music. While most of us find it difficult 
to recall forty or fifty faces, Cyrus, the elder, we are 
informed, knew every soldier in his army, and Themis- 
tocles knew twenty thousand citizens of Athens. We 
have an account of a man by the name of Thompson 
who could draw from memory a correct map of a whole 
parish, showing the position of everything in it, streets, 
alleys, barns, and houses. A man, known as Ravenna, 
having played a game of chess, could afterward describe 
all the moves which had been made and in the order in 
which they had taken place. Hortensius, the great 
Roman orator, was able after an auction to give from 
memory a statement of all the sales in their order, just 
as they appeared on the book of the clerk, with the 
amount each person bought. It has often been a matter 
of great wonder how Drew, the financier, could transact 
his immense business without keeping any books. The 
thing, however, is easily enough understood if we sup- 
pose him to have had a memory such as that of Hor- 
tensius. A certain Corsican, we are told, could repeat 
thirty-six thousand words backward or forward, putting 
each in its proper place. Another man, named Lyon, 
could commit to memory a whole newspaper, advertise- 
ments and all, in one day. Scaliger learned the entire 
Odyssey and Iliad by heart in three weeks. According 
to Eusebius, the manuscripts of the Old Testament being 
destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar at the time he destroyed 
Solomon's temple, five hundred and eighty-six years 
before the birth of Christ, we should have had no Old 



76 MEMORY 

Testament but for the memory of Ezra, from which it 
was restored. The Miserere, which was sung but three 
times a year in the Sistine Chapel of Rome, and the 
manuscript of which was kept secret, was Hstened to so 
intently by Mozart, when he was but fourteen years of 
age, that after having heard it twice he wrote it out 
and was able to sing it himself, and with an effect 
almost to rival that produced by the choir, although the 
effect of the piece when sung in the service of the chapel 
is said to exceed that of any other known one. 

Such memories, then, we may suppose, are partly to 
be accounted for by the aptitudes with which certain 
persons are born, the want of such aptitudes also account- 
ing for the very poor memory which certain persons 
from the first manifest for certain subj ects. It is related, 
for instance, of George Combe, the well-known writer, 
that he never could in his whole life learn the multipli- 
cation table, what many a boy has learned in one night. 

It may be remarked here that attention is set down 
by many as a condition of memory pertaining to the 
person, but perhaps not with sufficient accuracy. For 
attention itself being dependent on other conditions of 
memory, its separate force, no doubt, has been much 
exaggerated. Usually, indeed, we give attention to 
things on account of something else than attention. 

We are now arrived at the second division of our 
subject, the circumstances of one's life. 

Early impressions, it is noticed, have to do with the 
scope and direction of our memory, and probably because 
they pertain to the circumstances of our life. 

Arkwright, being the youngest of thirteen children 
and in a family the circumstances of which were strait- 



MEMORY 77 

ened, from early childhood had strongly impressed upon 
his mind the dependence of one thing on another finan- 
cially, so much so that he afterward invented spinning- 
machines; he accomplished his invention from the con- 
stant presence in his memory of the necessity of organ- 
izing details to a paying result. Bonaparte, early im- 
pressed with warlike scenes, came to have what we may 
call a military memory. 

Any sudden change of one's circumstances is likely 
to transform one's memory, as numerous instances 
show. 

When scarcely six years old, John Wesley was one 
night aroused from his slumbers to escape from the 
flames of his father's house. So much impressed was 
he with the event that ever afterward the thought of 
the uncertainty of life clung to his memory ; but for that 
fire he could never have preached the sermons for which 
he is now famous; that fire, indeed, was the happiest 
pedagogical device which could have been contrived to 
make him a great preacher. A certain man, who 
throughout his former life had been of a serious, if not 
of a melancholy, turn of mind, was during his last ill- 
ness wholly given up to jocularity. Whereas his recol- 
lections were once of the austere, they were now of the 
comic. What is called a loss of memory is often noth- 
ing but a change of memory, new rnatters being made 
prominent and old matters obscured; whoever has 
changed from one business to another, or from any one 
condition to another, must have been made sensible of 
this. 

Even cases of rotation in memory have been noticed, 
the person being subject to two different states, in the 



78 MEMORY 

one of which he has one memory and in the other of 
which he has another memory, being veritably part of 
the time Jekyll and part of the time Hyde. 

For example, a drunkard when sober could not re- 
member at what house he had left a certain parcel, but 
when he was drunk again he remembered very well 
where it was — he had one memory as drunk and another 
as sober. A man while in the somnambulistic state had 
resolved on suicide, but forgot all about it when he was 
brought out of that state. The next time, however, he 
was in the somnambulistic condition, he unfortunately 
made way with himself. We are told of a woman who 
changed from one memory to the other every time she 
fell into a deep and protracted slumber to which she 
was subject. When she had one memory she wrote one 
hand, when the other memory another hand; when she 
had one memory she knew certain persons only, when 
the other memory certain other persons. She had to 
be introduced to a person if she had only known him 
when she had the other memory. Thus she changed 
from one memory to the other every time she fell into 
one of her deep and protracted slumbers. 

Mediumship, as it is called, possibly is to be explained 
on this principle, the theory being that when the person 
acts as a medium he is merely in a second condition of 
memory. 

At a religious meeting, where testimonies of experi- 
ence were given, a young woman suddenly arose and 
spoke energetically, claiming especial authority for her 
utterances. She was* for the time being, it is believed, 
in another state of memory than was usual with hei, 
nothing more. 



MEMORY 79 

Sometimes the medium ev^en poses as one who has 
long since departed this Hfe, thinks he is really such, the 
truth perhaps being, however, that he is merely speak- 
ing from his secondary memory, his primary memory 
being for the time submerged. What is called being 
possessed of a spirit, good or bad, is also explained on 
the same ground. 

Instead of rotation in memories, however, the two 
memories may exist at one and the same time, it seem- 
ing to one in this state as if inside his own mind is the 
mind of another. Sidney Dean had a work of twenty- 
four chapters produced by what seemed to him to be a 
mind within his own moving his hand. 

Such writing as this is called automatic, and is some- 
times even signed by the name of a person deceased, 
but, as was said, is believed by many to be due to noth- 
ing but secondary memory. 

Some persons only, and not all, being subject to such 
a state, the cause of it is plainly to be ascribed to cer- 
tain circumstances which have influenced the brain. 
Circumstances of life, accordingly, have to be included 
among the conditions of memory. 

Beside the person and the circumstances of his life, 
it is plain that things themselves are alone what remains 
anyhow to influence memory. Four" conditions of mem- 
ory are therefore yet to be treated of — intensity, space, 
time, and relation. 

The intensity of things as it affects memory is usually 
considered under three heads — that of interest, that of 
perspicuity, and that of vividness. The first two of these, 
however, are but cases of the third, what is to our inter- 
est more vividly impressing the mind than what is not 



80 MEMORY 

to olir interest, what is clear more vividly impressing 
the mind than what is obscure. 

Vividness as a condition of memory is exemplified in 
what is specific and objective. 

Realistic descriptions, for example, are easily kept in 
mind because they vividly impress us. How easily we 
remember all about the Russian expedition of Napoleon, 
so vivid are the scenes of it. Let us contrast with this, 
however, the items of the losses of the Federals at Bull 
Run — four hundred and sixty killed, one thousand one 
hundred and twenty-four wounded, and one thousand 
three hundred and twelve missing — total loss, two thou- 
sand eight hundred and ninety-six. The reason we can 
remember the scenes of the Napoleonic expedition better 
than the items of the Federal losses at Bull Run is be- 
cause the one is intuitive and objective and the other 
analytic and abstract. For the same reason it is easy 
to remember that Simeon Stylites, out of devotion to his 
Saviour, went up on top of a post, where he continued 
to live for thirty years, supported by almsgivers, never 
once descending all that time ; but hard it is to remember 
that in a particular instance the exceptions to gender 
are arctus, alvus, colus, carbasus, vannus, and humus. 
It was stated by a certain man that he had forgotten all 
of the history which he learned at school when a boy, 
except that in a certain battle a horse's tail was shot off 
— that fact, said he, I can never forget. 

The reason why stories are easily remembered, and 
therefore powerfully affect the mind, is because they are 
detailed and specific — they vividly impress us for that 
reason. We have all heard the fable to the effect that 
a kid, standing on the roof of a house, made sport of 



MEMORY 



8i 



a wolf passing by. We are impressed with what is 
meant, the scene coming so vividly before us. Very 
different, however, it is if one say, by way of maxim, 
that many are brave, for no other reason than that they 
are out of harm's way. We have explained why the Hin- 
doos teach morals almost exclusively from fables. Bun- 
yan, by his account of the men's falling into the hands 
of Giant Despair, makes a vivid picture easily remem- 
bered by us. If, however, he had merely said that hesi- 
tation to do one's duty brings one into evil plight, how 
weak would have been the impression! Our Saviour 
makes a strong representation when he says that the 
characters of men, as related to the truth, are as so many 
kinds of ground on which the same kind of seed falls, 
some of it outside the field, some of it on stony, some 
of it on thorny, and some of it on good ground. It 
would have been very different, however, if he had 
merely said that the truth is the same for everybody, 
what one gets out of it depending on his character. 
There would have been nothing to impress us. 

Object lessons, it is plain, involve the same principle. 
They make things easy to recall, because they vividly 
affect the mind. We have a grotesque example from 
the Spartans and another from the Burgundians. The 
Spartans caused drunken men to be exhibited in public, 
so that their own children might be strongly impressed 
with the evils of intoxication. The Burgundians took 
their children to the limits of the country, where they 
had them thoroughly flogged, the reason assigned for 
the strange practice being that the children might never 
forget where the boundaries of the country were. 

We have just the same thing, and nothing more, in 



82 MEMORY 

the use of maps, charts, models, specimens, dissections, 
experiments; what these effect is to make matters vivid. 

It must follow, also, that whatever can be connected 
with things vivid will be easily remembered; this is a 
second main point to be taken into account. We remem- 
ber the shape of Italy, for example, from the shape of 
a boot, the shape of Florida from the shape of a pistol, 
the shape of Cuba from the shape of a banana. 

Herndon proposed a curious plan for remembering 
numbers on this principle. He would let objects stand 
for them — say a candle for i, a goose for 2, a tripod 
for 3, a table for 4, a hand for 5, a pipe for 6, a razor 
for 7, a pair of spectacles for 8, a gourd for 9, a melon 
for o. Then any number could be symbolized by some- 
thing vivid and easy to recollect, for example, a candle, 
a table, a gourd, and a goose thought of as in a row 
represent to the mind the date 1492, a goose with a can- 
dle in front of it the 21st, the day of October on which 
Columbus discovered America. 

It is the same principle of which Grey made use to 
remember numbers, having words to stand for them, 
the theory being that we remember words easier than 
we remember numbers. For each of the ten numerical 
characters Grey let both a vowel and a consonant stand, 
either of which could be used at pleasure, so that a word 
easily pronounced could always be manufactured to rep- 
resent any given number — for instance, afne, for 1492. 

Lately a system something like that of Grey has come 
into extensive use as a means of ordering goods, each 
article having a made-up word to signify it. 

The plan adopted by Grey was to let a or b stand for 
I, e or d for 2, i or t for 3, o or f for 4, u or 1 for 5, 



MEMORY 83 

au or s for 6, oi or p for 7, ei or k for 8, ou or n for 9, 
and z or y for o. 

Very easy to remember would be another plan of sym-- 
bolization — let a, e, i, o, u, long and short, stand for 
the ten numerical characters, also let stand for them 
consonants derived from the names of the same, n for 
I, t for 2, th for 3, r for 4, v for 5, x for 6, s for 7, 
g for 8, m for 9 (as if it were nn written together), 
and z for o. 

If by this arrangement we wish to remember the 
number of the house in which Frances E. Willard lived 
on Chicago Avenue, Evanston, 111., we should only have 
to keep in mind the word neti, 1728. 

Feinaigle, a German, used all the consonants for the 
ten figures, having allotted certain ones to each digit, 
no regard being paid to vowels, so that it was usually 
possible to find several real words in the language to 
represent any number. According to Pliny Miles's 
scheme, founded on this device, the word tribune stands 
for 1492. 

The next division of our subject is space, how it 
affects the memory. 

Things are beside one another in space; they have, 
therefore, position and multiplicity — we can say where 
each is with reference to the rest and how many things 
are there together. What, then, position and what, then, 
multiplicity have to do with our remembering things, 
these are the questions to be taken up. 

Respecting position, the principle is that, having in 
mind an object, we naturally remember things in prox- 
imity to it. This explains a seemingly otherwise inex- 
phcable thing, namely, that one who has resided for a 



84 MEMORY 

few years in a city comes to remember millions of things 
in it. He remembers them from their positions. 

It follows that it will assist us in remembering any 
branch of knowledge if we can represent to ourselves 
the parts of it as being beside one another in space. 
Studying history, for example, we may make what is 
called a map of time, a space being assigned to each 
age of the world, and the characteristics of that age 
written in the space. Studying optics, we may draw 
squares, assigning to one of them velocity, to one of 
them intensity, to one of them refraction, to one of them 
reflection, and to one of them color, writing in each square 
peculiarities of the topic. Studying geology, we may 
draw concentric rings to represent the different ages of 
the earth's crust, the first and innermost one the Silu- 
rian age, the next the Devonian, and so on. 

On this principle we have explained the method which 
in antiquity was ascribed to Simonides. Simonides, we 
are told, being called out during the progress of a ban- 
quet, the roof of the house suddenly fell in, crushing to 
death all those who had remained at the table. When 
the stones were cleared away, though the bodies were 
mangled beyond the possibility of recognition, yet was 
Simonides able to identify every one of them. For he 
had remembered what position each of them occupied 
at the table. To remember anything, then, said he, we 
are to have in mind certain fixed places, and therein to 
imagine the things which we wish to recollect. 

This device is highly commended by Cicero and by 
Quintilian. Cicero tells us how we can associate what 
we wish to remember with things which we imagine to 
be in the rooms of an imaginary house. On this plan, 



MEMORY 85 

if we were going to make a speech, we might imagine 
in the hall things which would suggest to us the ideas 
of our introduction, in the next room things which would 
suggest to us the ideas of our statement of the case, in 
the next room things which would suggest to us the ideas 
of the division of our subject, and so on, the things 
which would suggest to us the ideas of the conclusion 
being, perhaps, in the kitchen. Quintilian convinces us, 
once for all, of the great efficacy of such a method by 
the observation that, when we return to places in which 
we formerly were, we remember what once occurred in 
those places, and even the thoughts which we once had 
in them. 

If we imagine a house with ten rooms, the four walls 
and floors of which are divided into two equal parts, it 
is plain that we should have a hundred different places 
in such a house wherein to imagine things by which to 
remember others, and that imagining ten such houses 
we should have a thousand places. If in each of these 
thousand places we imagine four or five objects to recall 
so many words, we shall have deposited in it things 
enough to recall a good vocabulary. 

The principle of multiplicity as applied to memory is 
illustrated in this, that we find it comparatively easy to 
remember a few objects, say articles of furniture in a 
room, but extremely difficult to remember a great num- 
ber of them. 

It is proverbial that to learn anything one must con- 
fine his attention to a very few things. He must guard 
against a diversity of objects and a diversity of changes. 
He should, says Watts, not study where he has a good 
view from the window, nor should he indulge in recrea- 



86 MEMORY 

tions immediately after having attended on instruction. 
Pericles, during all the time of his administration, says 
Plutarch, never accepted invitations to dine out, nor was 
he ever seen in any other street than that which led 
from his house to the assembly. 

Hyde, the great adept in life insurance, it is said, was 
not recognized by anybody outside of his business in 
going from his house to the office or in returning from 
the same. He had nothing to do with society as such. 
All he thought of was how to get somebody to insure 
his life and how to invest the premiums. 

We contravene the principle of multiplicity by using 
one thing for many, effecting in this way a generaliza- 
tion, so to say. 

Having, for example, learned twenty-six letters, we 
are able by this means to recall any number of ideas 
whatsoever. Having learned the ten numerical symbols, 
we can by this means recall any number, however large. 
Letters and figures, therefore, beside their other uses, 
are a device by which we get over the condition that 
increasing the number of things increases the difficulty 
of recollecting them. Rules are a similar contrivance, 
as, for example, that for spelling words which double a 
final consonant — we do not have to remember how to 
spell each word individually, but only how to spell the 
words in general. So, also, we conjugate Latin verbs 
easily if we merely remember that the stems are for the 
most part unchanged, the personal endings nearly always 
the same, the tense signs recurring. Mnemonic letters 
and rhymes involve the same principle, as, for example, 
the well-known vibgyor and the lines for remembering 
the exact number of days in each month. 



MEMORY 87 

We also contravene the principle of multiplicity by 
using a part for the whole. The advantage of catechisms 
and teaching by question and answer is that a part of a 
subject can be considered and exhausted at a time with- 
out special reference to the rest. Of all merely human 
teachers Plato, it is said, is the most beloved. For he 
taught his doctrines in dialogues still extant, the learner 
considering one particular point at a time together with 
its various bearings. Abstracts or compendiums serve a 
like purpose in that they condense the matter of larger 
treatises into narrow limits. If, moreover, when we read 
a book, we mark such passages as seem important, add- 
ing here and there a note, we by this very means make 
a compendium of it, and with little trouble. 

There is no greater pedagogical mistake of the pres- 
ent day than the failure to take into account the prin- 
ciple of multiplicity. This we observe particularly in 
the study of languages, very small results being obtained 
in comparison with the time and labor spent upon them. 
The learner, to do anything in a language, has to know 
the various meanings of several thousands of words. It 
is not enough to know the meaning of several hundreds 
of them. As soon, however, as he tries to master these 
thousands of words he finds himself in the iron grasp 
of the principle of multiplicity. It is so hard to remem- 
ber a great number of things together. As somebody 
has well remarked, the reason why a student cannot read 
at sight a page of Latin or Greek is a very simple one — 
he does not know what the words mean. 

It is plain that from the beginning to the end of the 
study of a language the vocabulary should be an object 
of attention. The use of translations, interlinear or 



88 MEMORY 

Other, and the Hmiting of grammatical work to the ele- 
ments, will enable the pupil to secure the requisite time. 

As to the mastering of a vocabulary, the plan of short 
lessons and continuity is probably the best. If we try 
to accomplish too much, like the boy who put his hand 
into the jar of filberts and grasped so many that he could 
not get it out, we accomplish nothing. It is known that 
if one learn but five words a day he will in two years 
learn three thousand. The excuse, therefore, for spend- 
ing such an amount of time, to have at the end of it a 
knowledge of only a few hundred words, and this knowl- 
edge imperfect, is not as good as it was once supposed 
to be. Learning a vocabulary is like going over a moun- 
tain — step by step we approach the other side, but we 
cannot jump over the mountain. 

Another thing which the principle of multiplicity re- 
quires is small classes, and, therefore, the adoption of 
something equivalent to the so-called Lancastrian sys- 
tem, whereby students do some of the teaching. No 
other way does it seem possible to accommodate our- 
selves to that condition of memory according to which 
it is harder for us to remember many things than a few. 

We reach that division of our subject in which is to 
be stated what influence time has on memory. 

Succession, simultaneity, and perpetuity are the three 
characteristics which have to do with time — we find, 
accordingly, that memory is concerned with each. In 
the first place, we are likely to remember one thing from 
another if in their occurrence one came right after the 
other, the assassination of Lincoln, for example, from 
the surrender of Lee. In the second place, we are likely 
to remember one thing from another if they both oc- 



MEMORY 89 

curred at the same time, as the surrender of Vicksburg 
from the withdrawal of Lee from Gettysburg. In the 
third place, however, we remember a thing if it is con- 
stantly in time, that is to say, is repeated to the mind, a 
case of more importance than the other two, as examples 
will show. 

Houdon made a practice of rushing by toy and other 
shops, observing the wares as intently as he could. 
When past the shop he made an effort to recall as many 
of the things he had seen as it was possible for him to 
do. He found by this repetition that he gained power 
to recollect things, Herndon would let his mind drift 
for a few moments and then endeavor to recall as many 
as he could of the thoughts which had passed in his 
mind. By practice with cards persons learn to remem- 
ber every one which they may throw down. They begin 
by laying down one and recalling what it is, then two, 
then three, and so on. They must be careful not to 
increase the number too fast, must thoroughly master 
two cards before proceeding to three, and so on. The 
same way men learn to add long columns of figures at 
sight. They practise first with two or three small num- 
bers, hurriedly writing them, erasing them, and recall- 
ing their sum. They proceed to more numbers and 
larger ones, and so on. On this principle, too, some 
learn to take into the mind a page of writing or printing 
at a glance, are thus able to speak from manuscript as 
readily as from memory. They begin with a sentence 
or two, glancing at the page, then away from it, and 
trying to repeat what they had fixed their eyes upon. 
When they get so that they can master a sentence or 
two, they add a third, and so on, till, as was said, they 



90 MEMORY 

can take in a whole page at a glance. Demosthenes, that 
he might impress on his mind the phraseology of the 
speeches of Thucydides, copied them not merely once, 
but eight times over. It is related of a German that 
having learned by heart the speech of Demosthenes " On 
the Crown," and having recited it a great many times, 
he finally came to believe that he was Demosthenes him- 
self before the Athenian assembly. We are told that 
a man who found it difficult to remember that the word 
" surely " occurs twice instead of once in the well-known 
line of " The Raven," having said this line over twenty 
or thirty times to himself as fast as he could, ever after- 
ward remembered it well enough. Elihu Burritt, having 
open before him a page, as he blew the fire or pounded 
the iron, was able in this way to learn eighteen different 
languages at the blacksmith's forge. 

At least three thousand words have to be known be- 
fore we can do anything in a language. The only way 
to learn them is to go over them continually. If we are 
not willing to do this, it might as well be understood 
that we can never master the language. 

It was one of the advantages of the old-fashioned 
school, whatever else might have been its defects, that 
the pupil, when studying arithmetic, proceeded directly 
to the examples, working them by the thousand. He 
came to proficiency through sheer force of repetition. 

A teacher, whose success was marked, made it a rule 
to review every day all that had previously been gone 
over, possibly having in mind that Cato never made a 
speech on any subject in the Roman senate without 
somehow dragging in the thought that Carthage ought 
to be destroyed. 



MEMORY 91 

Examples of the lack of repetition are also good to 
illustrate this condition of memory. A pupil recites well 
to-day how it is proved that in every triangle, no matter 
what, where, or when, the sum of the angles was, is, and 
will be the equal of two right angles. The teacher re- 
joices in the mastery of the subject evinced by the pupil. 
Ten days from that time, however, the pupil could not go 
through that demonstration if his life depended on his 
doing it. A man relates that once he knew as well as 
could be all the words in the first book of the Anabasis, 
so that he could read it in a day, taking into his mind 
an account of all the circumstances which led up to that 
battle at Cunaxa which must forever be famous, but for 
years he had not done anything in the language. What 
was he to expect? One day, chancing to take up that 
same first book, he could not make out so much as that 
of Darius and Parysatis were born two sons. It is well 
known that one will even forget his native tongue if he 
is placed under circumstances in which he does not use 
it. For example, an Englishman who had resided in 
France for five years, on his return home could not tell 
where he had been, except in some such unintelligible 
expressions as " Got back — France — five years." An 
old lawyer, who had not practised for some time, on 
going to try a case, found himself at disadvantage in 
that a young lawyer quoted against him an appropriate 
passage in a law-book. " Alas, young man," said the 
old lawyer, " I have forgotten more law than you ever 
knew." 

In the last division of our subject it remains to speak 
of the relation of things, how this affects the memory. 

We remember more easily whatever is similar to any- 



92 MEMORY 

thing else which we may have in mind. One hearing 
an anecdote told, for instance, remarks that it reminds 
him of a story, which, accordingly, he proceeds to tell. 
We remember anything more easily, also, which is in 
contrast to anything else which we may have in mind, 
as, for instance, the vanity of human life from the jests 
of the grave-diggers in Hamlet. In general, whenever 
anything depends on another, we remember the first 
from the second, and vice versa. 

The association of one thing with another causes it 
to be recalled, as is illustrated by examples easy to find. 

Washburne relates in his memoirs that, when he was 
minister to France, he had on a certain occasion to in- 
troduce many Americans to the Emperor Louis Napo- 
leon, who having expressed his surprise how Washburne 
could remember names so easily, Washburne told him 
that the feat was not so great after all, seeing that he 
had always made it a practice when he met anybody to 
observe some peculiarity about him. This peculiarity 
would, by association, call up the name of the person. 

How hard it is to recollect a list of disconnected 
words — exceptions to gender, for example — is well 
known, the reason being that there is nothing by which 
one word suggests another. For example, Foote, the 
comedian, it is said, wrote ten lines of nonsense and 
challenged anybody to commit it to memory in ten min- 
utes, a thing which no one was able to do. 

A list of words, no matter how long it may be, can 
nevertheless easily be committed to memory if it is 
arranged so that each preceding furnishes a clue to the 
next. Such a list of words, for example, is this : street, 
pavement, quarry, workman, pickaxe, handle, wood, tree 



MEMORY 93 

— each suggests the following by its relation to it. 
Again, suppose it were required to remember the word 
chemistry from the word Hottentot, it would be possible 
to do so by inserting the intermediate series, black, char- 
coal, carbon, for Hottentot suggests black, black char- 
coal, charcoal carbon, carbon chemistry, so that, indi- 
rectly, Hottentot suggests chemistry. Such are the tricks 
of mnemonics made possible by the fact that one thing 
suggests another through the relations which it sustains 
to it. 

Classification helps us to remember things because of 
the principle of relation. 

It is illustrated by an apothecary shop, where the bot- 
tles, boxes, drawers, and cases are arranged in some way 
according to kinds, to the end that each article can the 
more readily be found. It is still better illustrated by 
a catalogue of a library, where subjects are arranged 
under heads, subheads, and particulars. 

In pursuing any branch of knowledge, says Watts, we 
should begin with a view of the subject as a whole, 
arranged under its proper divisions. We should begin 
with what is commonly called a primer. For, if we 
plunge at once into large works, we shall be like the 
mariner on the great ocean without a compass. If we 
confine ourselves to pamphlets treating only of particu- 
lar aspects of the subject, we shall be like the poor fish- 
erman who only knows his own bay. 

Regarding the subject of classification, the question 
arises whether, in the case of geometry, the divisions 
usually made might not be much improved, especially 
for beginners. Suppose, for instance, that the first 
division were triangles — the treatment of angles being 



94 MEMORY 

made subordinate to that of triangles. Then suppose 
that the second division were figures composed of tri- 
angles, all surfaces being regarded as subject to trian- 
gulation. Next, suppose that the third division were 
pyramids, the sides of these being triangles. Lastly, 
suppose that the fourth division were bodies composed 
of pyramids, all bodies being considered as so composed. 
Further, suppose that not all the details were gone into, 
but only things of prime importance. Would not such 
a classification have great advantages for beginners? 

Even an artificial classification may be of great use to 
the memory, as we see in the case of the alphabet, a 
classification which enables us readily to find anything 
not only in a dictionary or encyclopaedia, but even in a 
library. 

Some have performed mnemonic tricks by having fixed 
in the mind the representation of an animal for each 
letter of the alphabet, as, for example, ape for a, bat for 
b, cat for c, etc., then associating the things which they 
wished to remember with these animals in their order. 
We have also heard of persons who, having a poem by 
heart, associated with the phrases thereof, taking them 
in their order from the first, things that they wished to 
recall, disconnected words, for example. 

The general principle in these artificial systems is that 
we have a framework in the mind on which we hang 
things, so to say. 

The condition of memory founded on the relations of 
things explains also the use of cross-references, a sub- 
ject well illustrated in a method of teaching. 

For example, if the study were the geography of 
Palestine, the learner would consider not merely what 



MEMORY 95 

is ordinarily known as the geography of that country. 
He would, indeed, learn all about the physical features 
of the land and its political divisions, but, in addition 
to this, he would learn everything else about the coun- 
try. He would learn what representatives the vegetable 
kingdom has in Palestine — the sycamore, the olive, and 
the fig-tree, the flowers which bloom on the plain of 
Sharon, commonly called roses, the lilies which skirt the 
Mount of Beatitudes. He would learn that the Egyp- 
tians made coffins out of the wood of fig-trees obtained 
from Palestine. He would learn what representatives 
the animal kingdom has there — wild boars, porcupines, 
and curious squirrels. He would compare the wild 
swine of that country with our own, noticing the great 
transformation which environment has effected. He 
would learn what are the mineral resources of the coun- 
try, though, except salt, they are few. He would learn 
what are the commercial products of the country — oil, 
fruits, and grains — how each of these is obtained and 
how prepared for the market. He would learn what 
are the customs and manners of the people. He would 
learn what are the incidents and antiquities connected 
with the various places — the graves of Abraham, Sarah, 
Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah are at Machpelah; at 
Bethel, Jacob dreamed of the golden ladder ; at Shechem, 
Joseph was cast into the pit. He would learn what were 
the careers of the great men who once inhabited the 
country. He would learn what literature the country 
has had — Psalms, prophesies, chronicles. He would con- 
sider particularly the Book of Job, the greatest literary 
production of the Hebrew mind, among the first in the 
order of time of great literary productions in general. 



96 MEMORY 

The object of learning all these matters in connection 
one with another is not merely that the learner shall 
possess such a rich store of knowledge, but also that 
from the connections which all these matters have with 
one another it would be impossible that much of it 
should ever slip away from the mind, one thing always 
bringing up another, and the parts the whole. 

The mastery of one subject after this manner has also 
the effect to improve the mind generally, making it 
capable of absorbing and retaining knowledge on any 
subject. 

The chief advantage which a genius has over others 
lies in the fact that he perceives innumerable relations 
between one thing and everything else, his mind being, 
consequently, always interested, engaged, and invigo- 
rated, making the acquisition of knowledge easy for him. 

The object of teaching a pupil on the principle of 
cross-references is to make of him in some sort a genius. 



CHAPTER V 

IMAGINATION 

Imagination, using the word in the broadest sense, is 
characteristic of every faculty of the mind, every process 
of the mind being, in fact, one of forming images. In 
the restricted sense of the word, however, imagination 
may be defined as the power which the mind has to rep- 
resent impossibihty. 

The greater part of fiction is the work of conception 
rather than of imagination, if we speak of imagination 
in the narrower sense. The characters and circum- 
stances represented in fiction are such as really exist — 
the Achilles of Homer, for example, is what many a 
man is, the siege of Troy is that which often takes place. 
The most of fiction, therefore, is only history — general 
history, we might say — an account not of particular in- 
dividuals, but rather of classes of society; such fiction, 
accordingly, being as much the truth as any matter of 
history whatsoever. 

The process of mind employed in creating novels and 
the like is invention, compound conception. 

But coming to imagination in the stricter sense, it is 
plain that there are as many ways of representing im- 
possibility as there are ways of representing possibility 
itself. Herein, then, we have a clue of great importance 
in compassing the scope of imagination, taking imagina- 
tion in the narrower sense. 

97 



98 IMAGINATION 

Possibility, it is agreed, cannot be otherwise considered 
than under some one of three heads — quahty, quantity, 
and relation. What is more, for the purposes in hand, 
the head, quality, is embraced in that of quantity, any 
particular quality being determined by its quantitative 
degree. We say, for example, that the air is so hot (as 
indicated by the thermometer), thus designating its qual- 
ity. We have, therefore, the two heads, quantity and 
relation, to which, for the undertaking on which we are 
entered, we can reduce all possibility. 

As, then, there are only three kinds of quantity — 
degree, time, and size — and only three kinds of relation 
— inclusion, exclusion, and these two taken together — 
it may be reasoned that imagination can violate reality 
in but six ways. 

This result, in fact, comes to the same thing as that 
arrived at by Kant. Every truth, says he, can be ex- 
pressed in a proposition — every proposition, moreover, 
not only expressing a relation of things, but also a qual- 
ity and a quantity, the quality and quantity of proposi- 
tions being, as we know, a subject often treated of. 
Thus Kant reached the conclusion that all reality ulti- 
mately falls under the three heads — quality, quantity, 
and relation — and, as quality has a quantitative limita- 
tion, he was enabled to reduce these heads, for certain 
purposes, to two, namely, quantity and relation. 

Quantity, according to Kant, is intensive, protensive, 
and extensive, that is to say, quantity of the degree of 
quality, quantity of the length of duration, and quantity 
of the amount of space, this, in fact, agreeing with our 
measures, these all being of intensity, of duration, or of 
extension. 



IMAGINATION 99 

Kant ascertained also that there are but three kinds 
of relations of things — that of objects and their proper- 
ties, that of causes and their effects, and that of wholes 
and their parts. 

The first of these relations we may call inclusion, a 
property being included in its object; the second we may 
call exclusion, a cause excluding all but the one sole 
effect; the third we may call inclusion and exclusion 
taken together, the parts of a thing being included in 
the whole, but excluding one another. This last relation 
we may also speak of as composition, composition exem- 
plifying the relation of whole and part. 

There is still another way in which we may look at 
the matter. Things may be regarded as qualities with 
their quantities — the quantities as degrees, durations, and 
sizes ; the qualities as properties, causes, and constituents 
— whence the six ways in which imagination may mis- 
represent things. 

From a certain point of view, then, we have mythology 
explained as the representation of impossibility, this im- 
possibility being either in degree, or in time, or in size, 
or in property, or in consequence, or in composition. 

First, things are represented as of impossible degree, 
many examples illustrating it. 

The capabilities of the members and organs of the 
body, for example, imagination exaggerates. The eyes 
of Jupiter were so good that, although he was in Greece, 
he could yet see what was taking place in Italy. Heim- 
dall, the watchman of the gods, had such good ears that 
he could even hear the wool growing on the backs of 
sheep. Mars had such good lungs that his voice re- 
sounded over the field like the blast of a brazen trumpet. 



Lot 



100 IMAGINATION 

The hands of Minerva were so deft no one else could 
weave as she. The feet of Camilla were so nimble that 
she could run over the water v/ithout wetting them, over 
the standing grain without bending it. The dog Lelaps 
could not be overtaken by any other animal in flight. 
Hugi could run so fast that he got to the end of the 
race and back again before his competitor could even 
get started. Thor had such a good stomach that he 
could eat for supper eight fishes and could drink eight 
barrels of mead, this notwithstanding he was not a man 
of great proportions. 

Homer represents that, at the siege of Troy, Diomed 
declared in the assembly of the Greeks that they might 
all go home if they desired — he and his man, Sthenelos, 
would remain and take Troy alone. Caesar records how 
the Germans told him of the Suevi, a certain tribe of 
men, that the gods themselves were not to be compared 
with them, this although the gods are represented as 
possessed of unnatural powers. The heads of Guido 
Reni, perhaps, surpass anything that nature can produce. 
The landscapes of Claude Lorraine, it is said, have no 
existence — they excel in beauty any representation of 
real landscapes. The throne of Satan, as described by 
Milton, far outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. 
In all these cases, then, we have the exemplification of 
exaggerated degree, the assignment to things of a degree 
of quality impossible to them. 

Secondly, time is violated whenever imagination rep- 
resents things as taking place either sooner than is natu- 
ral or more slowly. 

Of things coming about too quickly we have the ex- 
ample of Aladdin's palace, that, though more gorgeous 



IMAGINATION 10 1 

than any previously existing, is built in one night. The 
apartments are numerous and magnificent. The hall 
alone has four-and-twenty windows, enriched with dia- 
monds, rubies, and emeralds, large and perfect. One of 
the windows is, by design, left uncompleted. The Sul- 
tan's artisans attempting to complete it, after working 
six weeks give up in despair. Aladdin has it finished 
in an instant. 

The contrast between this and the real building of a 
structure is wonderful. Solomon's temple, which was 
built about nine hundred years or more before the birth 
of Christ, required seven years for completion, notwith- 
standing the fact that the number of men employed on 
it was great. 

Of things coming about too slowly we have the ex- 
ample of the Struldbrugs of Swift, men and women who, 
though they became older and older each day and ever 
more and more decrepit, yet did not die, their day of 
death being unnaturally put off. We have the Hindoo 
representation of Brahma as a being, one night and one 
day of whom is between eight and nine billions of our 
years. 

To represent the weariness of time in the infernal 
realm Ingersoll imagined that a bird carries away the 
material of a whole world such as ours is, a grain of it 
at a time, flying with each grain over millions of miles, 
indeed, keeps on his journeys till none of the world is 
left — and yet it is not even breakfast time in the infernal 
realm. 

Thirdly, of size misrepresented by imagination we 
have also two cases, first, what is too small, and, sec- 
ondly, what is too large. 



102 IMAGINATION 

Of the first, Swift's Lilliputians are the best known 
example. Gulliver, a man of ordinary size, resembling 
in appearance, therefore, one of us, waking up one 
morning on a far-off shore where he had been cast in 
the night-time, finds himself tied down and guarded. 
Cords had been stretched over his body and fastened to 
stakes driven into the ground, these cords being in size 
about the same as our ordinary twine. On his body, as 
he lay there, a soldier, about six inches in height, was 
pacing up and down, his weapons in his hands. All the 
men in the country were somewhat similar in height, 
though an exception was made in case of the emperor, 
he being taller than any other Lilliputian by as much 
as the thickness of one of our thumb-nails. The soldiers 
were armed with bows and arrows, and when Gulliver 
tried to move, a regiment or two of them discharged a 
volley, the effect of which Gulliver could feel on his 
hand, as if needles were pricking it a little. A platform 
a foot and a half high having been erected, an officer of 
high standing delivered therefrom an address, not one 
word of which Gulliver understood, though it concerned 
him much, being a statement of the regulations to which 
he would be subject while sojourning in the realm. 
Gulliver making sign that he wanted something to eat, 
the little folk put up ladders against his side as he lay 
there. Up these they carried baskets of hams, quarters 
of beef, and joints of mutton. Putting up inclines also, 
they rolled up to his mouth hogsheads of wine. Gulliver 
took several baskets of meat at a mouthful and drank 
at one draught a hogshead of their wine — indeed, the 
little folk did not have wine enough for him. 

We are to remember that everything in the country 



IMAGINATION IO3 

corresponded in size with the men. Oxen were hardly 
more than four inches high, sheep but an inch and a half, 
geese were the size of our sparrows, larks the size of 
our flies. Dogs with which the people could hunt game 
would probably be about the height of their sheep, but 
otherwise not so large. ' The tallest trees were not more 
than seven feet in height. A sword was less than three 
inches long, a bucket the size of one of our thimbles. 
It took six hundred of their beds to make one for Gulli- 
ver. Their thread and needles were so small as to be 
invisible to him. Their fields were forty feet square. 
A city capable of containing five hundred thousand in- 
habitants was five hundred feet square, the walls two 
and one-half feet high and eleven inches thick. The 
gates in the wall perhaps were thirty inches long, and a 
little more than half as high. There were some build- 
ings in the city, however, that were as much as five feet 
in height. The whole empire was about twelve miles 
in circuit. 

Gulliver ate from a table which he himself improvised, 
it being like one of ours for height. Upon this table, 
that he had to keep in one of the public parks, he, at 
meal-time, often placed the emperor himself, together 
with some of his ministers, they sitting in chairs of state 
on the table to visit with Gulliver while he dined. 

It was calculated by the Lilliputian mathematicians 
that it would take one thousand seven hundred and 
twenty-four times as much food to make Gulliver a meal 
as it took for one of them. Their loaves of bread were 
the size of our bullets. Not more than three bites were 
necessary in eating the largest of their sirloin steaks by 
one of our species. A dish of anything was usually not 



104 IMAGINATION 

more than a mouthful for Gulliver. He could take 
twenty or thirty of their fowl on the end of his knife. 
A goose or turkey made a small mouthful for him. It 
took three hundred of their cooks to supply his wants. 

To transport Gulliver to the capital of the country the 
Lilliputians made a vehicle which for them was great in 
size. The wheels were six inches or more in diameter, 
and of these wheels there were twenty-two. The frame 
of the vehicle, something like a hay tackling, was seven 
feet long and four feet wide. Five hundred workmen 
were employed to construct it. Upon this vehicle they 
loaded Gulliver, using, to do so, eighty poles one foot 
in length, and fastening to these poles ropes the size of 
our twine. It took nine hundred of their men three 
weary hours to accomplish the task. Fifteen hundred 
of the largest horses that could be found in the empire 
were required to draw this vehicle, none of which horses 
was more than four and a half inches in height. 

Gulliver easily drew across a channel a whole fleet of 
vessels, the entire navy of the Lilliputians, having hooked 
to the ship with wires which he had fastened to strings. 
He waded the water, hauling after him the fleet. 

To form to ourselves some idea of the astonishment 
which must have overcome the Lilliputians on seeing 
Gulliver among them let us for a moment imagine that 
we ourselves are in a position similar to theirs. Sup- 
pose, for example, that a man should be discovered some 
night in the vicinity of Chicago on the shore of the 
great lake, a man whose size should be as much greater 
than ours as Gulliver's was greater than that of the 
Lilliputians. If we take the average height of human 
beings as sixty or seventy inches, they are ten or twelve 



IMAGINATION I05 

times as tall as the little folk are represented to have 
been. The giant we have supposed to be discovered 
would, therefore, be sixty or seventy feet high. If it 
would take a string three feet long to reach around the 
body of an ordinary man, a string which would reach 
around the body of the giant would have to be thirty 
or more feet long. If the average weight of men is one 
hundred and forty or one hundred and fifty pounds, the 
giant would weigh fifteen hundred pounds or more. 
Suppose, then, such a giant were discovered on the shore 
of the lake in the night, we can well think what a stir 
there would be among the people. While he is asleep, 
ropes are carefully stretched over his body and fastened 
on either side to stakes driven into the ground. Though 
these are our ordinary ropes, he has strength enough to 
break any of them when he awakes. A platform is 
erected fifteen or twenty feet high, from which the 
mayor perhaps delivers an address, telling what condi- 
tions the giant will be subject to, though the giant 
understands nothing of what the mayor says. Let us 
imagine, also, the scene of giving the giant his break- 
fast as he lies there, his side on the ground. To get 
up on him ladders have to be fifteen or twenty feet long. 
A hundred men ascend these ladders with baskets of 
hams, baskets of bread, baskets of apples, and the like, 
such as are found in our markets. Long timbers having 
been placed to form an incline, men roll up kegs of beer 
and wine. A keg of beer to him is no more than a glass 
to one of our species. A cubic foot of any kind of food, 
say of ice-cream, would be no more to him than a cubic 
inch of the same kind of food to us. We may also 
imagine the scene of taking him on a huge vehicle to 



io6 IMAGINATION 

the city. He has to be drawn by one thousand five hun- 
dred of our best horses. The vehicle would have twenty- 
two wheels, six or seven feet in diameter, and would be 
seventy or eighty feet long, forty or fifty feet wide. 
The giant would be loaded on this vehicle by nine hun- 
dred men, having poles twelve feet or more in length 
and ropes attached to them, it taking three hours to com- 
plete the work. If the giant walked through the streets 
of Chicago he would have to be careful not to brush 
away projections with his coat-tail. He must look out, 
too, not to tread on people who are going in or out 
the eating-houses. If the giant made himself a table on 
which to take his meals in one of the parks he could lift 
up the mayor and some of the aldermen, perhaps, and 
let them sit in chairs on the table while he conversed 
with them and at the same time ate his dinner. If a 
large boat were at anchor in the river he could hook 
to it and haul it after him, much as a tug now does the 
same thing. 

The representation of size impossibly large is exem- 
plified in the Brobdingnags of Swift, these looking as 
tall as church steeples, being men sixty or seventy feet 
in height. They stepped thirty feet at a stride. Their 
stile and stair-steps were six feet high, their beds twenty- 
four, their tables thirty. A page of their books was 
eighteen or twenty feet long — one of their dictionaries 
may have been about forty feet square and fully twelve 
or fifteen feet thick. Their razors were the length of 
two of our scythes, a case-knife twice as long. Their 
platters were seventy-five feet around. Indeed, such 
whales as abound in our waters were, as Swift repre- 
sents, often roasted and brought on the table whole, the 



IMAGINATION lo; 

occasion doubtless being Thanksgiving. Cats were as 
large as three of our oxen, dogs as three of our ele- 
phants, rats as one of our dogs, larks as nine of our 
turkeys, some flies as large as our pigeons. Apples were 
as large as our barrels, hazel-nuts as our pumpkins. The 
straw of wheat in the fields stood forty feet high. A 
man of our size lying in the stubble would be concealed 
from view, much as a rat is in our stubble. These giants 
put Gulliver, a man of our kind, on exhibition, taking 
him around the country in a box, as we take around 
mice for the same purpose, A mischievous dwarf among 
the giants, thirty feet in height, however, nearly drowned 
Gulliver by dropping him into a pitcher half-full of 
cream. He also once wedged him into the end of a 
beef-bone, the marrow having been extracted, causing 
Gulliver much annoyance. 

Voltaire's Micromegas illustrates the same thing. For 
this giant was many miles in height — the length of his 
nose was alone more than a mile. He could walk en- 
tirely around the earth in thirty-six hours, could easily 
wade the oceans. The diamonds of his necklace, strung 
on a string like beads, weighed from fifty to a hundred 
pounds each. The insects which he dissected, when he 
was a student at the university, were a hundred feet in 
diameter. Having taken up one of our largest ships out 
of the sea in his hand, he was examining it, with a view 
to scientific information, when by chance the ship, hap- 
pening to slip from his fingers, fell into the pocket of 
his friend, another giant, though not so large as he. To 
find the ship in the pocket of his friend required a great 
search. 

If it be maintained that it is not impossible that on 



I08 IMAGINATION 

some worlds things may be as small as they are repre- 
sented to have been among the Lilliputians, and on 
other worlds as large as they are represented to have 
been among the Brobdingnags, it is to be remembered 
that we are speaking of things as they are on this earth, 
where there are neither pygmies nor giants from which 
descendants may arise. That, however, some conditions 
of size are impossible, under any conditions, must be 
manifest, as, for example, we observe in the case men- 
tioned by Sterne. Providence, it was said, might make 
an ordinary man's nose of any size whatsoever. Not so, 
it was replied. For if a man's nose were as large as a 
church steeple it would not be the man who had the 
nose, but the nose which had the man. 

Fourthly, things may be represented as existing with 
properties that it is impossible they should possess. 

Swift's Laputa is an example, an island that is rep- 
resented as jfloating in the air, and raised and lowered 
at the will of the inhabitants, they having merely to 
move a lever to accomplish this result. The lever turned 
a horizontal shaft which was in the middle of the isl- 
and, and fastened to which shaft was a magnet, one side 
attracted, the other side repelled by the earth, whence 
it is easy to understand how the position of the lever 
and consequently the position of the magnet determined 
the ascent or descent of the island. The island is rep- 
resented as containing just ten thousand acres and almost 
exactly seventy-eight hundred and thirty-seven yards in 
diameter, its under layer being of adamant, two hundred 
feet thick, on the upper side of which were the metals, 
and lastly the soil itself, all the streams flowing to the 
centre of the island and into one or the other of four 



IMAGINATION IO9 

ponds, these about two hundred feet from the centre 
of the island. As, however, the island is represented as 
being raised or lowered at the will of the inhabitants, 
the thought is that they could avoid dew or rain by 
going above the clouds. 

This artificial land, conjured up by the imagination of 
Swift, recalls to our minds a late theory of things, ac- 
cording to which we are living on the inside of the crust 
of the earth, the oceans and continents being on the 
inside of this crust, the sun, moon, and stars in the inte- 
rior of the earth. 

But not alone to the mineral kingdom do we have the 
assignment of impossible properties, we have them also 
assigned to the vegetable kingdom. Certain trees, it is 
said, would grow till their tops could be seen from the 
ruins of Troy, then wither and die down, doing this 
again and again and forevermore, out of sorrow for the 
downfall of the city. We are persuaded, however, that 
no such trees ever existed, and that imagination in giv- 
ing them such attributes has transcended reality. The 
fruit of trees is imagined as having impossible proper- 
ties, Iduna's apples, for example. According to the myth 
of the Norsemen, if anybody ate one of these apples he 
was at once restored to youth, just as Ponce de Leon 
hoped to be by bathing in some fountain of Florida. The 
account which we have of the lotos is likewise imag- 
inary. According to Homer, the ships of Ulysses were 
borne for ten days over the waves from Malea, when 
they struck land, supposed to be some part of Africa. 
The sailors going on shore were given lotos by the in- 
habitants to eat, whereupon they lost all desire to return 
to their country. They had to be dragged to the ship 
by main force and securely tied there to get them away. 



no IMAGINATION 

We have, moreover, animals set forth by imagination 
as possessed of impossible traits. The Houyhnhnms of 
Swift, although they were horses, are yet represented 
as having the reasoning powers of men. To draw their 
sleds, ploughs, and the like, the Houyhnhnms had ani- 
mals exactly resembling men, but destitute of our reason. 
According to the portrayal of Swift, it was common in- 
deed to see a horse sitting on a sled, driving around the 
country, drawn by a number of these animals, known 
as yahoos. Swift represents that these horses built their 
own houses, or, perhaps we should rather say stables, 
there being in them mangers. The horses could use 
tools — for example, held a chisel between the pastern and 
the hoof. They could cut oats and grass and even make 
earthenware. They had a republic, in some respects 
rivalling that of Plato; were active in politics. Their 
colts were exercised in gymnastics and were otherwise 
well educated; excellent domestic regulations also ob- 
tained. 

According to Homer, when Patroclus was slain in bat- 
tle at Troy, the horses of Achilles, which he had driven, 
bowing their heads to the earth wept bitterly, their tears 
falling thick and fast. 

The attributing of such traits to animals, it is plain, 
is the work of imagination merely, animals being in- 
capable of them. 

Men also are assigned attributes by imagination which 
they cannot possibly have. In disregard of truth, we 
imagine that diminutive, invisible human beings, called 
elves, inhabit wild and desert places, there playing pranks 
upon unwary travelers. In disregard of truth, we im- 
agine that farm-houses are the abodes of small, invisible 



IMAGINATION III 

creatures in human shape, called brownies, who thresh 
the farmer's grain in the night or in the night churn 
the good housewife's butter. In disregard of truth, we 
imagine that every spring, brook, hill, dale, meadow, and 
what not, has its nymph, an invisible woman, who con- 
trols the place and somehow resembles it. In disregard 
of truth, we imagine that there are three women, called 
the Graces, who have to do with whatever is becoming 
and proper; three women, called the Fates, who control 
everything pertaining to one's destiny; three women, 
called the Furies, who punish crimes ; three women, called 
the Gray Sisters, who are the harbingers of age and 
want; three women, called the Gorgons, whom, if anyone 
look upon, he will be turned to stone. In disregard of 
truth, we imagine that a man called Apollo draws the 
sun through the heavens every day with a team of horses. 
In disregard of truth, we imagine that a man called 
Neptune has control of the waves and tides of the sea. 
In disregard of truth, we imagine that a man called 
Jupiter directs the storms, even hurling the lightning in 
his hands. In all these cases we really attribute to hu- 
man beings characteristics which are imaginary merely, 
the results of nature being really produced by mineral, 
plant, and animal existences in accord with the laws 
which the Creator has assigned them, and not by anthro- 
pomorphic divinities. 

Personifications are a similar work of imagination, 
Virgil's Rumor, for example, he representing it as a 
woman with a hundred tongues. 

Furthermore, things that are made or built are often 
portrayed as having impossible attributes. The ships of 
the Phseacians are an example. They are represented 



112 IMAGINATION 

by Homer as being without rudders and without pilots, 
yet of such a nature that they would always of them- 
selves go to the right port. Even if the sea were cov- 
ered with mist, this made no difference. The ships 
always went by the shortest route just where they were 
wanted. Mouse Island, near the spacious harbor of 
Corfu, is still pointed out as the remains of one of these 
ships, that which bore Ulysses from Corfu to Ithaca. 
At the mouth of the brook which now bears the name 
Cresside, on the same island, is a lake, and, on the south 
side of it, a spot is still shown where, according to tra- 
dition, Nausica first met Ulysses, she apprising the 
Phaeacians of his coming, so that they afterward fur- 
nished him with the ship. 

Fifthly, the relation of cause and effect is violated by 
imagination. 

Things are assigned as causes that are totally inade- 
quate to produce the results given them, as we discover 
from myths. Loki, we are told, is compelled to sit where 
a serpent drops down from above poison, which his wife, 
however, catches in a cup, but, when she must for a 
moment empty this cup, a little poison falls upon him, 
causing him to squirm and to howl so violently that the 
whole earth is shaken — this, as mythology has it, being 
the cause of earthquakes. 

Mythology, moreover, often represents one thing as 
instantaneously changing into another without any ade- 
quate cause, which is also at variance with the law of 
consequences. For example, when the waters of the 
flood had subsided, Deucalion and his wife having 
thrown behind them stones, those stones became men and 
women — the hard parts of them bone, the seams blood- 



IMAGINATION II3 

vessels, and the slime flesh, so that, as Greek mythology 
has it, the world was repeopled. Men are also repre- 
sented as instantaneously changed into flowers, trees, or 
stars. Ajax, having slain himself out of grief because 
the armor of Achilles was awarded to Ulysses, the lark- 
spur sprang up from his blood. This flower has on it, 
to be sure, certain marks which a good imagination con- 
strues into the first two letters of his name, these, more- 
over, forming the Greek word equivalent to our inter- 
jection, Woe! The sisters of Phaeton, mourning for , 
their brother, were transformed into poplar-trees on the 
bank of a river, their tears becoming amber as they fell 
into the water, this latter incident seeming to refer to 
the yellow leaves of the poplar which fall in autumn. 
On a hill in Phrygia the traveler is still shown a low 
wall, enclosing two trees, one a basswood and the other 
an oak. These, he is informed, were, according to tra- 
dition, Baucis and Philemon, an aged woman and her 
husband, once residents of the place, but turned into 
trees simultaneously on account of their expressed wish 
that neither of them should outlive the other. Most of 
the constellations of the heavens are imagined as having 
once been men or animals. The Great Bear, according 
to mythology, was once Calisto, a woman; the Little 
Bear, Areas, her son; they having been changed into 
these stars out of the compassion which Jupiter had for 
them, an agreement being made between Jupiter and 
Neptune that they should never dip themselves in the 
ocean, the consequence of which is that these constella- 
tions always continue to circle around the pole-star. 

This myth was known to the old Chaldeans, and it is 
a strange fact that the Iroquois of America used the 



114 IMAGINATION 

nSme of bear for the constellation which the Chaldeans 
designated by the same name. 

Transformations are, indeed, a common thing in 
mythology. Proteus could change himself into anything, 
becoming at pleasure beast, fire, or flood. 

Sometimes the violation of the causal connection ex- 
tends only to the conditions under which the results are 
feigned, the causes themselves being otherwise adequate. 
Munchausen, for example, imagines that having at sea 
a dog which made sign that game was nigh, he did not 
doubt the instinct of the animal, as well he might not. 
For soon the sailors, having caught a shark, found in 
its stomach several live partridges, some of them sitting 
on eggs. Here, manifestly, the only absurdity consists 
in the circumstances under which the fowls lived and 
were scented.. Another example from Munchausen bet- 
ter illustrates the same point : his ship having been 
swallowed by a whale, as he avers, he escaped from its 
stomach by placing a beam upright between its jaws, 
this keeping the mouth of the whale open while his ship 
sailed safely out. 

On account of causality things always pass away into 
others, but imagination may represent them as continu- 
ing long or always in the same state. Endymion, for 
example, always continued young, notwithstanding the 
passage of time. Diana took care of his flocks, so that, 
although he slept on age after age in his youthful beauty, 
everything was done just as well as if he w^ere awake. 
Rip Van Winkle kept in the same condition for twenty 
years, notwithstanding the great advance which the 
world in that time made. Greuselbach believed that the 
Egyptians knew how to have themselves embalmed so 



IMAGINATION II 5 

as to be unconscious for thousands of years and without 
change, when they were awakened to new life by a chem- 
ical process. It has also been represented that a woman, 
a few years ago, was living in Africa, who was still as 
young as she was when the pyramids were building. It 
is imagined, moreover, that a good Genius takes unfort- 
unate children to a plain upon the clouds, where they 
romp and sport forever, their childhood never ending. 
Swift imagines that a magician, merely by waving a 
wand, could exhibit Alexander still alive and well, at the 
head of his army, just as he and they all appeared before 
the battle of Arbela, more than two thousand two hun- 
dred years ago. Hannibal with his army crossing the 
Alps was made to appear, Julius Caesar also, in his last 
triumph, ascending the Capitol. Caesar, in fact, still had 
on the very same clothes which he wore that day, his 
clothing not having waxed old with the ages. Homer 
and Aristotle appeared on a stage at the head of their 
commentators, a motley throng, whom Homer and Aris- 
totle knew not. Swift, as he informs us, was good 
enough to introduce Homer and Aristotle to some of 
them. We have all heard, likewise, of the evening party, 
men and women eating and drinking and making 
merry, when, on a sudden and without warning, every- 
one stopped just in what position he or she was, and in 
the scene was there no change till a thousand years were 
flown, when the spell was broken and the eating and 
drinking and merry-making continued until the party 
dispersed. 

Philosophers, indeed, have pointed out that if we 
might suppose the entire universe to cease for a trillion 
years, and then to proceed exactly where it left off, no- 



Il6 IMAGINATION 

body would know any difference and everything would 
be accounted for just as it now is. 

What is more, causality requires that things take place 
in a fixed order down the stream of time, but imagina- 
tion may regard things as taking place backward. In 
the case of moving pictures, for example, if the crank 
be turned the other way the scene takes place in reverse 
order. One starts, say, with a harvest-field, the sheaves 
of grain in shock. As he turns the crank backward the 
sheaves become scattered over the field, and then un- 
bound, the grain becomes standing and uncut again, 
grows green, is younger and younger, till, finally, it is 
just springing from the ground, and lastly the sower 
appears scattering the seeds. Flammarion has pointed 
out that everything that occurs, if it were observed at a 
great distance by a person moving in the right direc- 
tion and at the right rate of speed, would all appear to 
him to take place in reverse order. Persons on their 
death-beds, for instance, would appear to recover and to 
become younger, eventually getting to be little children 
again, even elemental. 

The Phoenix of mythology is in some respects a case 
of the same thing. A bird, living to be five hundred 
years old, built itself a nest of sweet-smelling things, in 
which it died, to grow up again, whence our expression, 
" The Phoenix rising from her ashes." 

Sixthly, imagination represents an unnatural compo- 
sition of things, impossible combinations. 

We have an example from Virgil in that he speaks 
of shrubs the sap of which was human blood, the impos- 
sibility consisting merely in the assumed combination of 
shrub and blood, not in the existence of either of these 
things in itself. 



IMAGINATION II 7 

The monsters of mythology, also, are good examples 
of this use of the imagination. Sheep, swine, cattle, and 
horses are set forth as made up in impossible ways. As 
a matter of fact, no sheep ever had a fleece of gold, yet 
the ram of Phrixus is represented as having had such 
a one. Diana had a boar whose bristles were those of 
a porcupine, its tusks long like those of an elephant, and 
its eyes balls of fire. The king of Colchis had cattle the 
hoofs of which were brass. Neptune's horses not only 
had brazen hoofs, but also golden manes. No horses 
exist with wings, yet imagination so portrays them, so 
portrays Pegasus, for example. The Griffin, which was 
a creature of imagination, had the neck and wings like 
those of an eagle, but the rest of its body resembling a 
lion's. It built a nest of gold and laid in it an egg of 
agate. The Chimera was partly lion, partly goat, and 
partly dragon, had three heads, breathed out fire and 
smoke, and ravaged the country. The Basilisk, also, 
was a serpent which burned up the herbage with its 
breath. The Hydra was a serpent with nine heads — if 
anybody cut off either of these, two more heads grew 
out to take its place. 

Certain men were imagined by the poets as mon- 
strously composed. Briareus, as the poets made him, 
was a man similar to others, although he had a hun- 
dred hands. He could have driven a team of horses, 
lines and whip in hand, ate his dinner, and performed 
several kinds of work, all at the same time — he might 
even have done the entire work of a small factory. The 
Centaurs are represented as being men to the waist, the 
rest of them horse. Such a man, in fact, did not have 
to keep a horse, since he was both man and horse at the 
same time. The Satyrs were men the legs and feet of 



Il8 IMAGINATION 

whom were those of goats. The Gorgons were women, 
each particular hair of whose heads was a good-sized 
snake, their teeth were those of swine, and their nails 
were brass. They would have been employed in our 
time to husk maize or to pick cotton. The Harpies were 
women with the bodies of birds. The Sphinx was a 
woman with the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle. 
Argus, as fabricated by the poets, had a hundred eyes, 
never sleeping with more than two of them at a time. 
On the contrary, the Cyclops and the Arimaspians had 
but one eye each — the Cyclops, who were very large and 
tall, having the eye in the forehead. The three Gorgons, 
moreover, had but one eye between them all. 

Of things the like of which human hands have fash- 
ioned, those most commonly made the subjects of im- 
aginary composition are palaces, for example, that of 
Eblis, which was wrought out by the imagination of 
William Beckford. 

The visitor ascending the side of a mountain by a 
staircase reaches at length a level terrace extending 
along the mountain's side. The terrace is paved with 
polished marble, so that it really resembles in appear- 
ance an expanse of water. Moreover, on this terrace 
extends, as far as the eye can reach, a row of towers. 
Looking upward, the visitor sees that the tops of these 
towers — and they seem almost to touch the sky — are the 
abodes of birds and built in an architecture so strange 
as to be indescribable. Descrying in front of these tow- 
ers the broken walls of an immense palace, he is filled 
with terror as he beholds upon them four colossal figures^ 
images of strange creatures, as they are, part leopard 
and part Griffin. He is filled with greater terror as he 



IMAGINATION 1 1 9 

beholds upon them inscriptions which ever and anon 
change themselves into others as he watches them in 
the moonlight. 

Suddenly the mountain shakes, and, the side of it 
yawning, there is disclosed to the visitor a stairway, 
broad and ample, descending into the depths of the 
earth. On the right side of each step is a torch, and 
on the left side of each step is a torch, and above each 
torch a cloud of camphor-smoke, so that between these 
two rows of torches the visitor descends, reaching at 
last the bottom, only because he goes so fast. He sees 
before him three huge doors of ebony, the locks of which 
are enamelled. Applying then his keys to these doors, 
they fly open, and with a noise as if it were a clap of 
thunder. 

He enters a hall, the floor of which Is so extensive as 
to be mistaken for a prairie, the roof of which is so 
high as to be nearly out of sight. The floor is strewn 
with gold-dust and with saffron, from which there 
exhales a fragrance almost overpowering, this being 
increased also by the smoke of ambergris and aloes wood 
everywhere burning. The display of things to eat and 
drink is profuse beyond description. Rows of tables 
extend for miles between the columns of the hall, heaped 
with viands, fruits, and dainties. Vases of crystal 
interspersed sparkle with all kinds of wines. Strange- 
looking men and women, seemingly of a spiritual race, 
are everywhere moving to the sound of music which 
comes from below. Multitudes of other men and women, 
more nearly resembling ourselves, each deathly pale, 
however, and each holding the right hand to the heart, 
are moving hither and thither, disregardful of the sights. 



120 IMAGINATION 

In fact, the hearts of these are on fire because of the 
evil which they have done. 

Going down a passage which ghmmers with hght 
coming from afar the visitor passes some curtains, which 
are brocaded with crimson and gold, into a vast room 
carpeted with the skins of leopards. 

Eblis, the king of the palace, sits on a ball of fire on 
the top of a mound in the very midst of this room. 

The visitor passes out by an aisle into another room, 
where even greater wonders meet his gaze. There are 
in it fifty windows with frames of brass, through any 
one of which he sees several cataracts. 

On bedsteads of cedar are reposing living skeletons, 
prehistoric kings of the earth that lived before Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, inscriptions at their feet recounting 
whatsoever they have done, and from a mound in the 
midst of this room a similar skeleton exhorts to right- 
eousness everybody who enters. 

Huge vases, each with a lid on it, extend in a circle 
around the mound, being filled, as the visitor finds, with 
talismans, which, according to the strange usage of the 
place, he is obliged to present as tickets of admission to 
the remaining halls and chambers of the palace, these 
halls and chambers extending without end and without 
number into the depths of the earth, and containing all 
things whatsoever curious and rare. 

Those whose hearts are on fire wander through these 
halls and chambers forevermore seeking rest, but find- 
ing none, ever dissatisfied with what they have seen, ever 
hunting for something else. 



CHAPTER VI 

CONCEPTION 

We come to a process of the mind the importance of 
which it would be difficult to exaggerate. This process 
is often spoken of as simple apprehension, being such a 
generalizing as a simple inspection of things is able to 
afford us. It is the process whereby the mind forms 
images of the unchangeable aspects of things on the 
things merely being taken cognizance of, what is gen- 
eral in things being that which is abiding in them, what 
is general in things being that which is in all the things. 

We form in this way primitive classes. The power 
of mind to perform this process is known as conception, 
a name which is also extended to the process itself. 

It is, of course, to be understood that this is simple as 
opposed to compound conception. We here merely gen- 
eralize what exists. We do not change anything. We 
do not create something. Simple apprehension is not 
invention. 

Things are inorganic, or organic, or mental. The 
inorganic world consists, for the ordinary observer, of 
the sky, the ground, and the surroundings, so that his 
notions of the unchangeable aspects of the inorganic are 
confined to these. There is a world above him, below 
him, and around him. 

Of things above us are the canopy, the sun, moon. 



122 CONCEPTION 

and stars, and the clouds, together with things connected 
with the clouds. These in general are all the things 
over our heads, and what they now are they have, time 
out of mind, been; what the image of any one of them 
was in the minds of men thousands of years ago, thanks 
to our power of conception, it is in our minds to-day — 
certainly a very remarkable thing. 

To every generation the sky has been a canopy, slightly 
colored. What little difference there may be between 
one view of the sky and another we manage to neglect, 
doing which we call making abstraction; what in every 
view of the sky is the same we keep in mind, doing 
which we call generalization. 

What is the same in all our views of the sky we make 
in the mind an image of, this image being called a notion, 
sometimes even a general notion. 

To a notion which we have in the mind we give a 
name which stands for it, every common noun, in fact, 
being such a name. Certain nouns — indeed, the greater 
part of them — are called common, not because, as the 
boy thought, they are an inferior kind of noun, but 
because they denote what is common to things, what is 
general in them, what in them is unchangeable. 

The sun looked the same to Joshua some ages ago as 
it looks to us to-day, he having in mind the same notion 
of it that we have. 

The moon is mentioned by Thucydides in his history. 
He informs us that the Athenians having observed it to 
be eclipsed when they were about to abandon the siege 
of Syracuse, the four hundred and thirteenth year prior 
to our era, were on that account unwilling to leave, the 
consequence being that, when they did abandon the 



CONCEPTION 123 

place, they were all either killed or captured. It is mani- 
fest that the image of the moon was the same in their 
minds as it is in ours, a silvery disc broken into shadowy 
forms. 

As regards the stars the case is similar. For example, 
a child happens for the first time in his life to be taken 
out-of-doors before daybreak to go on a journey. Ob- 
serving the shining lights of the heavens, he unhesitat- 
ingly calls them stars, though plainly he has never before 
seen those particular stars, having never before been out- 
doors so early in the morning. He calls them stars be- 
cause he has an image in his mind how stars look. 

The clouds, says Solomon, return after the rain, the 
word which he uses to denote clouds having to him the 
very same meaning that the word we use to denote 
the same thing has to us, although between him and us 
have lived and died eighty-five or more generations 
of men. 

The clouds, we notice, are moved by the winds, and 
of the winds we also have a notion, carrying it in our 
heads as we journey down the stream of time. 

Horace, who lived more than nineteen hundred years 
ago, tells us of the thunder which he heard, of the light- 
ning which he saw, yet all the thunder that has been heard, 
all the lightning that has been seen since that day when 
his mortal remains were borne to their last resting-place 
on the Esquiline have been of like character — the thun- 
der as he heard it, the lightning as he saw it. On many 
parts of the globe does the lightning play, in many parts 
is the thunder heard, yet who is there that ever fails to 
know either of them by the notion which he has of it 
in his mind? 



124 CONCEPTION 

The rains which swelled the Euphrates when the 
Jews hung up their harps upon the willows growing 
beside it differed not perceptibly from the rains which 
swelled the Tennessee when the hosts of Grant con- 
tended with those of Johnston on its bank. People in 
Babylonia and people in Tennessee, though separated by 
thousands of years, had yet the very same notion of rain. 

The snows of Valley Forge which chilled the air to 
Washington were the same as those of Moscow which 
chilled the air to Bonaparte; the notion that the one had 
of snow was the same as that which the other had of it. 

The hail which beat upon the heads of the Amorites 
was like that which is still observed ; in fact, we have in 
our heads the very same notion of hail that the Amorites 
had in their heads, though our heads be not beaten with 
the hail. 

The sleet that prehistoric men saw glittering on trees 
and shrubs as so many gems was like what we often 
behold, the notion which they had of it, that which we 
have. 

David, lamenting the death of Jonathan, says : " Let 
there be no more dew upon the mountains of Gilboa ; " 
we know what he means, because we have the notion of 
dew that he had, notwithstanding the mutations of time 
which fill in the gap between him and us. 

Siberia shows us the ruins of cities underground 
and inscriptions that we cannot read, people known as 
Scythians having long ago lived there; people who must 
have been acquainted with frost, must have possessed 
the very same notion of it that we possess." 

Of everything above our heads, then, we have a no- 
tion in the mind, of everything connected with every- 



CONCEPTION 125 

thing above our heads. This notion of the sky, indeed, 
connects all men and all ages into one, yet manifestly 
could not do so but for that process of the mind known 
as conception, simple apprehension. 

We have next to consider what is under our feet — 
loam, clay, sand, gravel, and rock, connected with which 
are burrows, pits, caves, mines, quarries, and with these 
metals and gems. 

The soil of Egypt is mentioned by Herodotus, who 
declares that, in his opinion, the whole land of Egypt 
was once a bay, that it was filled up with the mud of 
the Nile. He ventures the hypothesis, indeed, that if 
the Nile were turned into the Red Sea, it would in ten 
thousand years convert that sea into arable land. It is 
loam which the Nile deposits, giving to Egypt its fer- 
tility. The Egyptians, then, though they lived long 
before us, long before Moses even, had in their heads 
the same notion of loam that we have. 

The case is the same with regard to clay, bricks made 
of which by the Babylonians exist in great numbers, the 
Babylonians having thought of it as we do. 

Of sand old accounts exist, one of which may be men- 
tioned. Archimedes wrote a work — still existing, strange 
as this may seem — in which he makes computation how 
many grains of sand it would take to fill in all the space 
around the earth out as far as the farthest fixed star, 
the sands together forming a great globe, the number, 
according to him, being what we should express by 
sixty-four with twenty-one ciphers attached. It is evi- 
dent, therefore, that he entertained the same idea of 
sand that we entertain of it, had the same image of it 
in his mind. 



1 26 CONCEPTION 

' Vitruvius speaks of gravel in his work on architecture, 
having had the notion of gravel that we possess. 

Agrigentum stood partly on what was popularly- 
known as the rock of Athens, the which the traveler 
beholds to-day. Empedocles, who lived there, must 
have had the same notion of rock that we keep in 
mind. 

The gospels speak of the holes of foxes. We know 
what is meant because we have in mind what the writers 
had each in his mind. 

We read that Joseph's brethren threw him into a pit 
in the vicinity of Shechem, where now his tomb is. The 
pit we understand was an opening in the ground much 
the same as those which we observe to-day. We have, 
in short, the very same notion of a pit that Joseph had 
of one. 

The Phoenicians, we are informed, had tin-mines 
worked in England where to-day the same mines are 
still worked ; in fact, the notion of a mine was the same 
to the Phoenicians that it is to the Englishmen. 

The traveler coming into that part of Sicily where 
once Syracuse stood sees the quarries, now overgrown 
with weeds, where the Athenians pined away more than 
four hundred years before Christ. The notion which 
they had of a quarry was that which we have. 

Tubal Cain, we read, was a worker of metals. We 
understand by this that even prehistoric men had the 
same notion of metals that we have. 

It is stated that of every age there remain gems. If 
we had them arranged in a row they would stand for 
all the generations of men. The gem of Thotmes, on 
which it is said that the eyes of Moses may haVe gazed, 



CONCEPTION 127 

is seen by us in the museum, it meaning no more to us 
than it meant to Thotmes. 

We have, then, a notion of the ground as a whole, 
this notion made up of subordinate notions, both the 
whole and its parts being the same for us as for those 
who lived before us. 

There is a third something involved in the inorganic 
world, our surroundings, these being of water or of land, 
the diversities of which are, on the one hand, marshes, 
springs, brooks, rivers, ponds, lakes, and seas; on the 
other hand, plains, hills, mountains, vales, islands, pen- 
insulas, and capes. 

We are told of the Pontine marshes which men, rep- 
resenting successive generations, have undertaken to 
drain — Appius, Caesar, the emperors, the popes, and our 
engineers. To each of these the notion of a marsh has 
been but that which it is to us — ground partly covered 
with water. 

The fountain of Arethusa, to which Virgil alludes, is 
still pointed out near the place where Syracuse once 
stood. This fountain has persisted through time, but 
not more so than the notion of a fountain. 

The brook Cyane, which successive generations have 
looked upon, has to each of them been the same. 

Firdusi bids us not to worry. For, says he, the Tigris 
will continue to go down to the sea long after the heads 
of the Mahometan church have passed away. It appears 
that at least two hundred generations of men have looked 
upon the Tigris, but it has been to all of them what a 
river is to us — a stream of water, somewhat large, con- 
fined between banks and flowing to an outlet. 

Exodus contains mention of ponds. When we read 



128 CONCEPTION 

the account we are as certain what is meant as was the 
writer himself. 

Thrasymenus, the lake near which Hannibal overcame 
the Romans, is still beheld by the traveler. It is, in 
fact, by Hannibal's notion of it that the traveler recog- 
nizes it. 

The Athenians sailed over the sea to Sicily, the sea 
meaning the same to them that it does to us. 

The plain of Shinar, read of on tablets dug up in 
Mesopotamia, is similar to any other plain with which 
we are acquainted — a level portion of country. 

People to-day go to Athens and stand on the hill 
where the Areopagus met, but the hill is the same to 
them that it was to the Areopagites. 

Hiram, we are told, sent out men to the mountains of 
Lebanon to get timber, he having had in mind a notion 
of what mountains are, not different from what we have. 

Jews nowadays speak of the valley of Hinnon, having 
the same notion of a valley that their forefathers had 
of one. 

Writers tell of islands, meaning what we do by the 
same name — a body of land surrounded by water. 

Anaxagoras spoke of the Peloponnesus, a peninsula, 
having had a notion of what the same is. He knew no 
better what a peninsula is than any of us know what it 
is ; indeed, wherever there is a pond or a stream we may 
notice something of the kind on a small scale. 

Similarly we speak of what is called a cape, a point 
of ground extending into the water. 

Our notion of the sky, of the ground, and of our sur- 
roundings make up our notion of the inorganic, that is 
to say, our notion of nature as a whole exclusive of the 



CONCEPTION 129 

organic and the mental. Everybody, therefore, so to 
say, has the inorganic world fast in the net of his notions, 
having a sort of universal wisdom, or metaphysic, of the 
inorganic, a system of notions to which the inorganic 
shall always conform. This must be evident. For sci- 
ence is a knowledge of the invariable way in which 
things conduct themselves, the particular way in which 
they exist. 

The Egyptians, in knowing that the inorganic world 
consists of things the nature of which is always the same 
— the canopy, the sun, moon, and stars, the clouds, the 
ground, the diversities of land and the diversities of 
water — truly possessed a science of inorganic nature. 
They were able to say beforehand how things must be. 
They were able to get all this without any efifort, it hav- 
ing been ordained by the Creator that we should have 
the process of mind known as conception, simple appre- 
hension, primeval generalization. 

Precisely similar as we have a notion of the inorganic, 
we have a notion of the organic. 

We have a notion of the vegetable kingdom, which, 
indeed, for the ordinary observer, is composed of trees, 
shrubs, vines, grasses, grains, herbs, roots, gourds, flow- 
ers, weeds, and moss. 

The olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane are be- 
lieved to have been standing when our Saviour spent 
there that last sorrowful night. He had the notion which 
we have of them; not only so, but he had the notion of 
trees in general that we have. 

We read in Xenophon of the shrubs which the Greeks 
saw when they were marching toward Babylon, more 
than two thousand years ago. Not one of those shrubs 



130 CONCEPTION 

probably is now in existence, they have passed into eter- 
nity with the writer, yet the notion of shrubs has sur- 
vived to our day. 

The spies brought back to the IsraeHtish camp some 
grapes from the vale of Eschol. We can easily conceive 
how the vines on which those grapes grew looked to the 
spies, not different, indeed, than vines look to us now. 
Numerous are the kinds and variety of vines, and yet 
none of us ever fails to recognize any of them the mo- 
ment he sees one, having in his mind the notion of vines 
in general, the unchangeable aspect of them. 

Homer tells us of the grass on which the horses of 
his heroes fed, conveying to our minds what his notion 
of grass was — one, in truth, not different from the one 
which everybody since his day has possessed. 

Herodotus speaks of the grain which he saw growing 
in the vicinity of Babylon, twenty-three hundred years 
ago, assigning to it a yield which must seem fabulous, 
namely, that if one sowed a bushel of it he might hope 
to reap two hundred. How long the heads of the grain 
were he refuses to divulge for fear nobody will believe 
him. We understand perfectly well what he means by 
grain — the very same thing that we mean by it; we do 
not gather at all that he was speaking of trees, shrubs, 
vines, or even of grass. 

On the great pyramid of Egypt, it is said, is an in- 
scription in hieroglyphics stating that upward of two 
million dollars were paid out by Cheops in supplying the 
builders with radishes, onions, and the like. The Israel- 
ites, moreover, in the wilderness, we read, longed for 
the leeks of Egypt. Those peoples, who so long ago 
departed this life, had no different notion of the vege- 



CONCEPTION 131 

tables which grow in our gardens — such as herbs, roots, 
and gourds, together with their representatives and imi- 
tations in the wild state — than has any child of the pres- 
ent day who may chance to live on a farm and, perhaps, 
may help to gather into the cellar the vegetables for use. 

The same thing is true in regard to flowers. Our 
Saviour, in the well-known sermon on the Mount, alludes 
to the lilies, doubtless having pointed to those flowers 
themselves. To this day, at any rate, lilies are seen 
growing on the slopes of the Mount, descended, we must 
suppose, from the very ones at which he pointed his fin- 
ger more than nineteen hundred years ago. One notion, 
however, connects the lilies which our Saviour saw with 
those which travelers now behold there. 

The tares spoken of in the gospels were weeds, the 
like of which still exist. We know what is meant, be- 
cause we have the notion which the writer had. 

The man of eighty years knows a burdock the moment 
he sees one, for it has the same look that the burdocks 
had which grew in his father's door-yard when he was 
a boy. He remembers to have built a play-house out of 
them when they were taller than his head. Throughout 
the joys and sorrows of a long life that notion of a 
burdock has kept its place in his head. 

Rocks covered with moss are spoken of in one of the 
odes of Horace. Those who sang this ode in the days 
of Augustus must have had the same notion of moss 
that we ourselves possess. That notion, indeed, has sur- 
vived the Roman Empire. 

The notion of the vegetable kingdom, therefore, as 
made up of trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, grains, herbs, 
roots, gourds, flowers, weeds, and moss, is common to 



132 CONCEPTION 

the human mind as such; by means of it, in fact, it is 
that everybody views the vegetable kingdom as a system 
of unchangeable aspects, and owing to the mental process 
of conception this is possible and without effort. 

We have a notion of the animal kingdom as made up 
of the notion of beasts, the notion of birds, the notion 
of fishes, the notion of shells, the notion of amphibians, 
the notion of lizards, the notion of serpents, the notion 
of insects, and the notion of worms. 

Do we ever wonder what an ancient author means 
when he speaks of beasts ? Do we not entertain the very 
same notion of them that he held in his mind? 

We are all familiar, moreover, with the story of the 
Roman who, when told that the sacred chickens would 
not eat, said : " Let them drink, then," thereupon throw- 
ing them overboard to drown. He had the notion of 
a bird that any of us has. 

Juvenal tells of a huge fish, which, brought into the 
room where the banquet was held, seemed to look down 
on the company from the shoulder of the waiter. Juve- 
nal no doubt expected all posterity to understand what 
he meant, but how were this possible unless they should 
have precisely the same notion he had of fishes ? 

Oyster-shells are found even in the refuse heaps of 
primeval men, showing that even they had a notion of 
such animals. 

Moreover, turtles and lobsters, as well as mollusks, 
are known to the ordinary observer as shells. 

Virgil tells of toads having their habitation in hol- 
lows and of frogs that uttered their complaints, meaning, 
doubtless, such animals as we still see or hear. It mat- 
ters not that no animal that was living in his day now 



CONCEPTION 133 

survives, the notion that he had of amphibians still 
clings to us. 

Horace speaks of lizards, intending to designate the 
kind of small animals to which v^e give that name, 
though, in a more extended sense, crocodiles, alligators, 
and even some other animals may be classed under the 
same head. 

Serpents are spoken of by various old writers, none 
of whom we fail to understand. 

Virgil gives up a whole book to the consideration of 
bees, the average life of one being only a few weeks; 
whence the number of generations of bees that have come 
and gone since his day! Having had the notion of a 
bee, it is plain he had the notion of an insect, which in- 
cludes in itself the notion of bees, of ants, of spiders, 
and of others. 

Through this notion all the countless hosts of insects 
which have been on earth since Virgil's time have passed, 
through it all the countless hosts of insects that are to 
come must pass. 

The fossils of worms are found in the stones which 
were used in building the pyramids ; all the worms which 
existed prior to the building of these piles conformed 
to the notion expressed in those fossils, all the worms 
which ever shall exist will conform to that notion. We 
have the very same notion of worms that primeval men 
had — perhaps the very same notion that the worms them- 
selves had. 

The ordinary observer, then, however untutored, has 
a notion of the animal world, knowing it as a system of 
unchangeable aspects, beasts, birds, fishes, shells, am- 
phibians, lizards, serpents, insects, worms. 



134 CONCEPTION 

' We have, in fact, a notion of the whole organic world, 
just as we have one of the whole inorganic world, these 
worlds being to each of us a system of unchangeable 
aspects. 

Some sort of biology, accordingly, existed from very 
early times, men having a knowledge of the invariable 
ways in which living organisms appear on the earth. 
That plants appear under certain constant classes gave 
them a botany, and that animals appear under constant 
classes gave them a zoology. 

As we come through simple apprehension to have in 
mind notions of the unchangeable aspects of the inor- 
ganic and of the organic, so do we come through simple 
apprehension to have notions of the unchangeable aspects 
of the mental. 

It will be sufficient to confine ourselves to two divisions 
of it, namely, primitive notions of utilities and primitive 
notions of religion. 

A vast number of utilities, it will be found, depend 
on a very few simple notions, namely, that of the lever, 
that of the incline, that of the bow, that of the thread, 
that of the bodkin, that of the knife, that of the vessel, 
and that of the vehicle. 

An example of the lever is present to the savage when- 
ever he makes use of a stick. When, moreover, he throws 
a stone or uses one for pounding or crushing anything, 
he has an object-lesson of the lever; in fact, whenever 
he makes use of a stone in this way he has a hammer, 
although when he fastens a stone to a stick he has what 
is more commonly called such. He makes use of the 
lever in either case, in the first his arm being the lever. 
He acquires this notion with little or no effort. The 



CONCEPTION 135 

principle, however, is a very important one, since the 
wheel and axle and pulley are cases of it. 

It has been held to be marvelous how the Egyptians 
could have placed those stones of such enormous weight 
where we now find them. Some have even gone to the 
extreme of claiming for the Egyptians miraculous pow- 
ers, but by a very simple calculation it may be shown 
that with levers of the requisite length and with men 
enough to use them the placing of those stones in their 
present positions was comparatively easy. The wisdom 
of the Egyptians consisted in conception merely, in sim- 
ple apprehension. Our difficulty in comprehending the 
Egyptians has arisen from our failure to realize the im- 
portance of this process. Could anything, then, better 
exemplify the importance there is in understanding the 
processes of the mind than this application of a prin- 
ciple involving one of these processes to explain what 
has been deemed inexplicable? When we have once 
grasped the idea of simple apprehension we have no fur- 
ther need to ascribe the origin of Egypt to Atlantis. 

Of the incline the savage has an example every time he 
ascends a hill, he observes how he gets to the height with 
an ease not the case when the ascent is perpendicular. 

The Egyptians are said to have made use of inclines 
to raise stones, a very simple means indeed, though, as 
was said, one very easily discovered. 

The wedge and the screw are but forms of the incline, 
so that the lever and incline taken together are the prin- 
ciples of machinery in general. 

Simple apprehension, therefore, from the first fur- 
nished mankind with mechanical wnsdom. 

The notion of the bow or spring is another easily 



136 CONCEPTION 

obtained from simple apprehension. The savage, hurry- 
ing through the thicket, bending back in his course 
branches which when let loose returned to their former 
positions, had it exemplified for him, the bow, in fact, 
being but a device by which power stored up is sud- 
denly released into action. The tendons of animals 
furnish savages with strings ready-made, taking one 
of which and tying the ends of it, each to the end of a 
stick, and drawing the string tightly, they had a bow. 

We can understand, then, how it came to pass that 
peoples widely separated from one another were yet able 
to invent the bow — they could get the notion from sim- 
ple apprehension independently of one another. 

The notion of thread is that of fibres twisted together 
to form a strand, a notion not hard to acquire, yet of 
great value. Threads twisted together make strings, 
strings twisted together make ropes, ropes twisted to- 
gether make cables. Threads woven together make 
cloth. How much, in truth, depends on a simple notion, 
namely, that of thread! 

That people in different parts of the world might, in- 
dependent of one another, have learned to make cloth 
need in nowise surprise us. 

The notion of a bodkin is not a difficult one to obtain, 
it being merely that of a rod in which there is an open- 
ing. Examples of the bodkin might doubtless have been 
found in nature, some little stick, some small bone, or 
some slender stone being found with a hole through it; 
or, what would not have been much different, a savage 
might have made an aperture through some of these 
materials out of mere freak — many savages might have 
repeatedly done it. 



CONCEPTION 137 

The use of the bodkin is to draw strings through 
hides to sew hides together for clothes, holes having 
previously been made in the hides. 

The notion of a knife is that of some material brought 
to an edge, the advantage being that it now encounters 
resistance in but a narrow line, that is to say, it now 
encounters the fewest possible obstacles to penetration. 
The knife was observed in the case of shells, of bones, 
and even of stones, nobody, indeed, being able to be 
destitute of it. 

We have first the ordinary knife, a piece of stone, 
bone, or metal ground down to an edge. A dart is a 
double-edged knife pointed at the end, spear-heads, 
arrow-heads, and the like, being examples. A saw is 
really nothing but a row of small darts, the advantage 
gained being that resistance to it is only at the points, 
and that a multiplicity of points can be worked at the 
same time. A rasp contains the same principle, except 
that there are many rows of points side by side. The 
awl is a modified form of the dart, the material being 
narrow and sharpened at the end all around. The needle 
is a combination of the bodkin and the awl, the eye being 
carried to the end. 

The sewing-machine needle is set down as a great 
invention, but really all the inventor had to do was to 
sharpen a bodkin. 

The axe is a combination of the hammer and the knife, 
the lever here being made use of to give force to the 
cutting. 

Stone axes are found all over the earth, in places, 
indeed, as widely separated from one another as is Vir- 
ginia from India; they are found under the foundations 



138 CONCEPTION 

of Troy; they may well enough be under the pyramids 
themselves. Did some one person, nobody knows where 
or when, invent the axe, and are all axes but copies of 
that one? Not necessarily so, seeing that anybody in 
any part of the world could come at it independently 
from the notion of a hammer and an axe combined, a 
notion he might obtain from simple apprehension. 

The notion of a vessel is that of a hollow cylinder 
or other body open at one end and closed at the other, 
a device by which any liquid can be moved from one 
place to another or can be put or kept in any place at 
pleasure. 

Cups, pans, pails, kettles, are examples of the simplest 
form. A cask is but the case of a vessel closed at both 
ends; the bottle, of a vessel nearly closed at the top. A 
boat, as indeed language bears witness, is nothing but a 
vessel, though in this case the object is to exclude rather 
than to include liquid. A house is a vessel turned upside 
down. 

The invention of vessels, we may suppose, sprang up 
spontaneously in different parts of the earth, men hav- 
ing the notion of them from simple apprehension. Pieces 
of cocoa-nut shell, the shells of animals, and even geodes 
would furnish examples ready made. What is more, 
wishing to heat water in a cocoa-nut shell, and at the 
same time to keep the shell from burning, the savage 
may have daubed the shell over with moist clay, that is 
to say, with mud, the fire baking the clay, giving him 
the idea of earthenware. We observe, in fact, that the 
invention of such utilities was much less arduous than 
we might have supposed it to be. 

Lastly, the notion of a vehicle is that of something 



CONCEPTION 139 

on which something- else is or can be borne over the 
ground, or at least over some fixed material. From this 
one notion gotten from simple apprehension, it will be 
found, all the vehicles in the world have been derived. 

The rudest form of the vehicle is exhibited in the 
stone-boat, a board or combination of boards which is 
dragged upon the ground. In the case of the sled the 
friction is diminished by reducing the under surface of 
the boards to two edges called runners. If we fasten 
these runners at one point only and make them circular, 
the same edge to return on itself, we still further reduce 
the friction, having converted the runners into wheels. 
We now have the cart. A wagon consists of two carts, 
a railroad coach of two wagons. A velocipede is a cart, 
so to say, one of whose wheels is directly behind the 
other, what is gained by this arrangement being that the 
second wheel follows the track of the first, thus getting 
rid of some friction which the common cart meets with. 
A wheelbarrow may be said to be a velocipede with but 
one wheel. The boxes used in shops to convey money 
and parcels from one part of the building to another are 
vehicles the track of which is above instead of below them. 

If we might conceive that children could be brought 
up on an island by deaf and dumb persons in utter igno- 
rance of all our inventions, yet their posterity, we may 
believe, would in time come to invent vehicles like those 
which we now possess. 

We learn, therefore, how our utilities depend on a 
very few notions which all men everywhere get without 
effort through the process of conception, simple appre- 
hension, off-hand generalization. 

As regards religion, the second topic proposed to be 



140 CONCEPTION 

treated of, we have to explain how, from the simplest 
observation, men obtain notions on which to found it; 
we have, in other words, to explain how on principles 
of conception the heathen attain to piety. 

Fundamental notions of religion are monotheism, wor- 
ship, messiahship, millennialism, sin, retribution, redemp- 
tion, and perhaps immortality. 

As to monotheism, nature being known to simple 
apprehension as a system of unchangeable aspects, inor- 
ganic, organic, and mental, it was certainly not difficult 
to arrive at the notion of a supreme being. How many 
gods soever people might be pleased to imagine there 
be, it is nevertheless just the same as if there is but one 
God, the forms of nature — mineral, vegetable, animal, 
and mental — being permanently what they are. Things 
exist and act in but one way, wherefore, if many gods 
obtain, it is just the same as if they do nothing. This 
is a notion with which simple apprehension supplied the 
heathen. 

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of years before 
Christ the Chinese spoke of Heaven as the supreme One ; 
the Hindoos held that there is but one power in the uni- 
verse, namely, Brahm. The tombs of Egypt contain the 
inscription, " One only art thou, creator of things, and 
alone dost thou make all that is." On the weather- 
beaten rocks of Mount Behistun is read what Darius 
caused to be inscribed there twenty-four hundred years 
ago, the purport of which is that but one God exists. 
Among the Greeks, Zeus, among the Romans, Jupiter, 
was supreme. Widely separated from the old world was 
the new, yet even here the same belief obtained. The 
Mexicans consecrated the temple of Tezcuco to the cause 



CONCEPTION 141 

of causes, designating the cause of causes as enthroned 
above the nine heavens, the nine heavens possibly stand- 
ing in their minds for the unchangeable aspects of 
nature. They built the temple nine stories high, sur- 
mounting it with a black dome, this dome, it may be, 
symbolizing the supreme power. The dome was studded, 
it is said, with stars of gold, typifying, no doubt, the 
dependence of the heavens on omnipotence. 

The way, then, we account for people, scattered 
through so many times, places, and conditions, all hold- 
ing the same belief in a Supreme Being, is that they 
easily obtained the notion of such an existence, from 
simple apprehension. They merely observed that nature 
continues to exhibit certain aspects, is, in short, directed 
after one form only. 

The notion of worship is one just as easily obtained 
as is that of one God. The forms of nature, inorganic, 
organic, and mental, are the ways in which supreme 
existence is manifested. To go against these forms is 
to bring all our endeavors to naught, to act in accordance 
with them is to insure success. The heathen, therefore, 
having r.esp^ct for the power manifested in these forms 
of nature, made this power an object of worship. Their 
thought was probably something of this sort : a man 
would more readily do the will of the Almighty, as ex- 
pressed in the aspects of nature, if he should have a con- 
stant intent to perform that will, wherefore the good 
results of the spirit of worship. 

The notion of the messiahship also, at least the notion 
of it in its most elementary form — namely, that enter- 
tained by the heathen — is one given in simple apprehen- 
sion. For there is only one kind of a man which each 



142 CONCEPTION 

of US should become, a kind of a man which the heathen 
had some notion of, having made a generahzation from 
the characteristics observable in men. 

Ages, therefore, before the birth of Christ, Hindoos, 
Egyptians, and Persians vvrere persuaded of his coming, 
at any rate were persuaded of the coming of some such 
person. Virgil, writing before the birth of Christ, sets 
forth the notion of a Messiah in one of his pastorals. 
Tacitus declares that the notion was then common 
throughout the world. The Mexicans seem to have had 
a Saviour in the person of Quetzalcoatl, a man whom 
they assumed to be a pattern for them to follow. Per- 
haps every tribe of savages has entertained some such 
notion, the process of conception having prepared the 
way for the missionary. 

Strange as it may seem, the millennium also is a no- 
tion to be gotten by simple apprehension. The word, 
to be sure, is merely a name for a thousand years, but 
with us has come to mean a perfected state of society 
upon this earth. When the character of everybody is 
in accordance with the perfected pattern of humanity a 
state of society properly designated as perfect will be 
ushered in; this, we may believe, was the thought of 
antiquity. 

We are able, therefore, to understand how it was that 
Zoroaster, a long time before our era, was enabled to 
prophesy the coming of the millennium, fixing it at three 
thousand years from his date. If he lived when we sup- 
pose he did the time which he set for the perfection of 
society would very nearly coincide with the Treaty of 
Westphalia, 1648, that is to say, with the beginning of 
the modem regime. 



CONCEPTION 143 

Society is not as yet by any means perfect, but has 
made so much progress toward perfection that what re- 
mains to be done seems but httle compared with what 
has already been achieved. For example, if a savage 
could have been told of the state in which we live to-day 
it would have been more Utopian to him than is Utopian 
to us the millennial age. 

Men in the early days of the world, noticing that there 
were some whose characters approximated perfection, 
observed also that when enough of them did so, some- 
thing like a perfect state of human life must obtain on 
the globe. 

Some notion of sin, moreover, is open to conception. 
Mankind in their early history observed that the state 
of one's mind has to do with his welfare, that, indeed, 
misfortune is attendant on a bad state of mind. They 
might have called this ignorance, stupidity, sin, it mat- 
ters not what, to them it was simply a disadvantageous 
state of mind. With the discovery of this they discov- 
ered sin. 

The notion of retribution is immediately joined with 
that of sin. For only as one conforms to a correct view 
of things is he free from pain. Suffering is, in fact, the 
natural result of a wrong state of mind. The heathen, 
even savages, might as well have the notion of retribu- 
tion as we ourselves may have it, seeing that it requires 
little thought to obtain it. 

The notion of redemption is, of course, that of a 
process whereby a disadvantageous state of mind is re- 
moved. The means at hand for effecting such a thing 
might at first have been very inadequate, but the notion 
of what was to b^ done was ever clear enough. From 



144 CONCEPTION 

time immemorial mankind have understood that they 
should be transformed into better individuals. 

Even the notion of immortality is foreshadowed in 
simple apprehension, notwithstanding that some after- 
thought is necessary to complete it. That the forms of 
everything, material and mental, perpetuate themselves, 
this had only to be applied to the mind, considering it 
as an individual existence, to obtain the notion of the 
mind's survival of bodily changes. 

The heathen took it that the individual things which 
appear in the world are only those which have previously 
existed, . whence the doctrine of the transmigration of 
souls. They would seem, however, to have been right 
in attributing permanence to the ultimate constituents of 
things, such a dogma being little more than that of ours 
known as the conservation of energy. 

We have explained, then, perhaps, why a child, when 
being told by his elders that he would surely die, he 
understanding by death extinction altogether, disbelieved 
what they said, though he had never had any instruction 
on the subject and had never before even heard of death. 

These notions, then, monotheism, worship, messiah- 
ship, millennialism, sin, retribution, redemption, and per- 
haps immortality, it is plain are given men in the process 
of conception, simple generalization. 

How, therefore, similar religious beliefs could have 
arisen in different parts of the world is apparent. 



CHAPTER VII 

JUDGMENT 

The notions which we at first have of things are but 
meagre and incomplete, it is by judgment that they are 
improved. What is related of a boy illustrates the case 
of us all. He lived between two creeks, which to the 
north were not far apart, and to the south came together. 
Trees in profusion skirted their banks. The sky seemed 
to him to fit down over the ring of woods like an inverted 
basin. The boy supposed that the little plain upon which 
he lived, encircled by woods, and only a few miles in 
extent, was all there was of the universe. His notion 
of the world was not wrong, so far as he had any notion 
of it at all, but it was wrong only in what it did not 
contain. 

The boy learned in time that the land extended thou- 
sands of miles beyond his native woods, even to oceans 
beyond which were still other lands. His own locality, 
indeed, looked just the same to him as previously, his 
former notion of it not being in itself wrong, but being 
capable of improvement by the introduction into it of 
the notion of extent. 

This new notion which he had put into the old one 
was what in technical language is called a predicate, the 
original notion being called the subject. It comes about, 
then, that this judgment is expressed in a proposition 
whereof a predicate is affirmed of a subject. The proc- 

145 



146 JUDGMENT 

ess of mind employed is also called judgment, the form 
of which is that an image in the mind is so modified as 
to include in itself another image. 

It is plain that a multitude of details are gone into by 
everybody after this fashion whereby his notion of the 
world is made more precise, enlarged, we may say, each 
of these details consisting in an added predicate. One 
learns that in certain parts of the earth are ranges of 
mountains, that, indeed, there are lands above the clouds ; 
he learns that great stretches of land exist, composed of 
deserts, over which storms of sand drift; he learns that 
fire in places issues from the ground, particularly from 
certain mountains, that fire can be produced by rubbing 
sticks together; he learns that there are mines in the 
earth which yield the metals and other substances which 
he uses, including even salt, oil, and coal. Lead he took 
to be a rigid substance, but now he learns that it can be 
melted and run into moulds. Gold he at first understood 
to be nothing but a yellow metal, beautiful to look upon, 
but now he learns that it can be dissolved in aqua regia, 
the same as sugar can be dissolved in water. He learns 
that there are great oceans on the surface of the globe, 
that, indeed, they surpass in extent the entire area of the 
lands — more exactly, two and a half to one ; he learns that 
there are rivers thousands of miles in length; he learns 
that water comes from the clouds, which are made of 
vapors, the vapors arising from the waters of the earth; 
he learns that there are regions of the earth in which 
there are no rains at all, others in which the rainy sea- 
son comes regularly. He learns that water can be so 
treated that there arise in place of it two gases, one just 
double the amount of the other; he learns that the air 



JUDGMENT 147 

on the tops of mountains is rare, that in old wells it 
destroys life; he learns that air in motion is wind, that 
in certain parts of the earth great winds, called hurri- 
canes, sweep everything before them; he learns that 
there are in certain parts of the earth prevailing winds, 
in other parts continuous calms. He learns that while 
it is night in the place where he lives it is day some- 
where else, that the seasons also transmigrate. He 
learns that to the north of him in summer and to the 
south of him in winter there is a vast country in which 
it is perpetual day, the sun not setting, but seeming to 
move around the country in a circle. 

In each of these cases, and in many more, everybody 
makes a judgment about the inorganic world, improves 
his notion of it by adding a predicate. How much en- 
larged, then, does the notion become as compared with 
that which the boy had when he thought that the entire 
universe was included between those two creeks! 

It is plain that this process of judgment which a boy 
goes through with respecting the world was once gone 
through with by the race in general — what is the same 
thing, that there was once a time when men had not as 
yet much exercised their judgment. They had to im- 
prove their primitive notion of the inorganic world by 
adding a great number of predicates not previously 
thought of. 

This coming of the race to exercise its judgment must 
have marked an epoch in human affairs. The race could 
never again be what it previously was, since its notion 1 
of things had been so much improved. 

Homer represents that the ocean passes entirely around 
the land of the world, that in the midst of the land is 



148 JUDGMENT 

the Mediterranean, and that into this the river Nile flows 
from the south, its sources being in mountains, beyond 
•which Hve certain pygmies, men of small stature. Far 
away in the western ocean, he held, are the islands of 
the blessed, as the same were called. He also states that 
Ulysses, sailing far to the north, found a land where it 
was continuously day, and another where it was con- 
tinuously night. 

As a matter of fact the ocean does extend all the 
way around the old world, the Pacific and the Atlantic 
branching from the Antarctic to meet again at Bering 
Straits, the Arctic being regarded as the northern end 
of the Atlantic. 

America, North and South, at least those portions of 
them approaching the equator, might be considered as 
islands in the western ocean with pleasant climes. 

Stanley, in our day, has gone to the sources of the 
Nile and looked upon the Mountains of the Moon, as 
they are called, and has actually found the pygmies, 
descendants, no doubt, of those whom Homer mentions. 

That both continuous day and continuous night exist, 
alternately, toward the pole has also long been known to 
us. Homer was under the necessity of representing two 
countries to the north, the one all the while light and the 
other all the while dark, evidently because he did not 
understand how contradictory conditions could pertain 
to the same place. He did not know the astronomical 
reason which we do for this state of things. 

It is plain that this knowledge which was possessed 
by those of Homer's time relative to the earth could not 
have been gotten by men in the early ages of the world, 
for the reason that the distances to be traversed in order 



JUDGMENT 149 

to get it were so great. It was by the Phoenicians that 
this knowledge was given to mankind, they being the 
first great maritime people of the earth, going great dis- 
tances in their ships to carry out and bring in merchan- 
dise, the traffic in which made them immensely wealthy. 
It is believed that they penetrated to the Baltic and to 
the northern seas. Diodorus gives a tradition even that 
their ships, being driven by a wind, discovered a great 
country in the western ocean, which we may suppose to 
have been America. We have to take into account also 
that, as they opened up lines of trade in all directions 
from them, much news about other lands would neces- 
sarily come to them, even if they did not actually go to 
those lands. 

When mankind had once got this knowledge It is evi- 
dent that their notion of the earth was much improved 
in comparison with what it had previously been ; what is 
the same thing, respecting the notion of the earth, a 
crisis had been reached, a definite progress made which 
never could be lost. 

What is more, contemporary with this advance of 
judgment about the earth, we find that there was also 
an advance of judgment about matters in general. It 
showed an improvement of judgment when the Phoeni- 
cians discovered that commerce is a way of getting a 
living in addition to stock-raising and farming, since 
they had added a predicate to the notion of human em- 
ployment. It showed an improvement of judgment when 
the Phoenicians built factories in many parts of the world 
where were made new and attractive things, as, for ex- 
ample, the famous dyes which they were enabled to sell 
at high prices. It showed an improvement of judgment 



150 JUDGMENT 

when the Phoenicians simphfied the alphabet, reducing 
it to about twenty characters which were capable of ex- 
pressing to sight any word whatsoever, and consequently 
any idea conceivable. Necessarily this became the basis 
of future alphabets and wrought a great change in the 
world. It showed an improvement of judgment when 
the cities of Nineveh and Babylon were built on a grand 
scale, rivaled in sized only by our modern cities, out of 
brick instead of out of stone, and in the decoration of 
which a great use of color was made. Upon a vast plat- 
form, elevated many feet above the level of the ground, 
building was placed on top of building, each smaller 
than the one below it, till often a seventh or perhaps 
even an eighth or ninth was added, the walls inside being 
wainscoted with sculptured slabs of alabaster, and above 
these, colored tiles placed. The entrances below were 
guarded by great winged beasts calculated to impress 
wonder on the beholder. It showed an advance of judg- 
ment when a great artificial lake was created by excava- 
tions made in a few days, the notion of engineering 
being somewhat enlarged. It was an improvement of 
judgment when the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and lastly 
the Persian empire was organized, reducing to unity so 
many different communities, and yet allowing them some 
measure of local self-government. It was an improve- 
ment of judgment when in place of the crude literary 
performances which had before existed, the Iliad and 
the Odyssey were produced. It was an improvement 
of judgment when the drama of Job was composed, the 
Psalms of David, the Reproaches of Isaiah. It was an 
improvement of judgment when the religion of Israel 
arose with its abhorrence of idolatrous worship, and its 



JUDGMENT 151 

inculcation of the notion of one God, non-anthropomor- 
phic, ubiquitous, and eternal. 

The times of which Homer gives an account, it is 
believed, are those of a thousand years before the Chris- 
tian era, differing, therefore, not much from the time 
of the Trojan war and of the building of Solomon's 
temple. Within the time, then, stretching from the 
exodus of the Jews to the battle of Marathon, from 
Rameses to Miltiades, we have a grand epoch in human 
progress, so marked, indeed, that even as children we 
have all learned of it and by it been impressed; so' 
marked, indeed, that many persons have fallen into the 
error of supposing that there was little progress pre- 
viously and that there has never been any since, for- 
getting what the Greeks and what the Romans and what 
Christianity have done for us. 

Studying the processes of the human mind we are 
able to see that this epoch in the affairs of men was pro- 
duced by the unfolding of the faculty of judgment, the 
making more specific in the human mind of the notions 
of things. This is what, in fact, produced this great post- 
Egyptian civilization, different aspects of which were 
Nineveh, Babylon, Phoenicia, Judea, Achaia, and Persia. 

We have also another very important application of 
the principle of judgment; we are able to explain by it 
what is observed in learning to read. It is known that 
between the primer and literature, properly so-called, 
there are usually read by the pupil three readers, the 
second being higher in grade than the first, the third 
than the second. What seems to be true is this : the 
work of the primer represents merely the inceptive stage, 
the pupil learns, for example, that a certain sign stands 



152 JUDGMENT 

for his notion of a dog-, another for his notion of run- 
ning, and so on. We have explained, therefore, why 
pretty rapid progress is made with the primer, the pupil 
having here only to learn signs for simple notions. In 
the readers, however, he enters on a process of judg- 
ment, he has to improve his notions. It is no longer a 
question of one simple sign for one simple notion, shades 
of meaning have to be noticed at every turn. He is 
going through a process respecting language similar to 
that which a boy goes through respecting the earth. 
This part of learning to read is therefore tedious and 
uncertain. 

Judging, it will be observed, consists in making dis- 
tinctions; for example, when we learn that gold is solu- 
ble in aqua regia, we have something by which gold, 
as we know it, is distinguished from gold as we for- 
merly knew it. What is much the same thing, we have 
put gold into a particular class of things, those things, 
namely, which can be dissolved; we have found another 
limitation, another specification of it. 

We are most familiar, indeed, with the word judg- 
ment in its application to judicial procedure, yet here 
even what meaning the word conveys to us is that of dis- 
tinction. When the judge passes on a matter he puts 
it into a certain class — the theft, for example, was petit 
larceny, the murder was of the first degree, and so forth 
— the judge making distinction of the thing passed on. 
Our Saviour, in illustrating the nature of the last judg- 
ment, instances the case of a shepherd separating the 
sheep from the goats, a distinguishing of them into 
classes. The German word for judgment literally means 
to make distinction, not only so, but to make primitive 



JUDGMENT 153 

distinction — means, in fact, to attain a natural specifica- 
tion of a thing. 

Judgments have been divided into analytic and syn- 
thetic, analytic judgments being those which are implied 
in the very notion of a thing, as, for example, " Gold 
is yellow," synthetic judgments being those which are 
not implied in the very notion of a thing, as, for exam- 
ple, " Gold is soluble " ; but for certain purposes this 
division is not very important, it being ofttimes as much 
a discovery to draw out what is implied in a notion as 
to find something in it which was not directly implied. 

A process of judgment similar to that which takes 
place with regard to the inorganic takes place with 
regard to the organic. 

It is plain that a child has at first but a very inade- 
quate notion of plants, little more perhaps than that they 
are pleasant things to look upon which grow up out of 
the earth; but as he becomes informed about them he 
improves his original notion. 

Take first the matter of roots. He finds that the roots 
of plants may in certain cases be mistaken for leaves, 
the roots in some plants having the appearance of ten- 
drils and being in the air instead of in the ground, as, 
for example, the tufts which hang from trees in the 
Dismal Swamp of Virginia. He finds that the roots of 
plants, when in the ground, absorb water, which, with 
whatever it contains, ascends the plant as sap, the press- 
ure exerted by which being great, as is shown in the 
experiment of fixing a tube to the end of a grape-vine, 
a good weight of mercury in the tube being then lifted 
by the force of the sap alone. 

Take, secondly, the matter of the stems of plants. 



154 JUDGMENT 

He finds that the stems of plants often grow under the 
ground, being thus Hable to be mistaken for roots. 
Quack grass, for example, is exceedingly hard to destroy 
for this very reason, the stem branches underground 
growing to a good length, while from the branches 
everywhere proceed the secondary ones. It is common, 
indeed, to call all these branches roots, but they are 
really the same as the runners in the case of strawberry 
plants, except that in the case of strawberries the run- 
ners are above instead of below the ground. The true 
name of these branches, as we know, is rhizomes. In 
the case of potatoes, what one might mistake for the 
fruit is nothing but enlargements of the stem, called 
tubers. Even when not running the stem is sometimes 
under the ground, as is the case with the crocus, this 
form of stem being called a corm. Cactus exhibits all 
three of these forms above ground, rhizomes, tubers, 
and corms, the stem of the cactus often consisting wholly 
of these. 

As, moreover, new branches of the stems of plants 
grow out of their buds, it is possible from the stems of 
little trees to obtain a new quantity of trees, at least in 
certain cases. It is also the custom of nurserymen to 
cut open the bark of young trees and to insert buds of 
some favorite variety, so that the branches grown from 
these buds shall bear the desired fruit. Sometimes, too, 
the piece of a twig is inserted in the stump of a tree, 
the twig being sharpened and its bark made to match 
with the bark of the stump, the object being that the 
branches growing from the buds of the inserted pieces 
of twig shall produce the fruit wanted — a process known 
as grafting. 



JUDGMENT 155 

Take, thirdly, the matter of leaves. They may be 
mistaken for something else. What appears to be the 
bark of a cactus, for example, is in reality its leaves. 
Owing to the droughts to which this plant is subject it 
is an advantage to it to have as little surface as possible 
exposed to the air. But the reverse of this is true in 
the case of plants in general. For a large tree, such as 
an elm, for instance, although the entire surface of its 
stem may be comparatively small, obtains by means of 
its leaves a surface of five or ten acres to expose to the 
air. What other modifications leaves are capable of is 
also shown in flowers, flowers being but leaves adapted 
to a particular purpose. Stamens and pistils are special 
adaptations. 

Moreover, it is not at first known, but is afterward 
ascertained, that pollenization is one of the means of 
propagating plants, the pollen being produced in the 
stamens and falling into the pistils. Strange enough, 
it is found that in many plants the stamens are on certain 
individuals and the pistils on others, the pollen having 
thus to be shifted over from one plant to another. The 
pollen, indeed, is often blown from one flower to an- 
other by the wind, but oftener is transferred by means 
of insects, these being attracted into the flowers, owing 
perhaps to the fragrance or the color of the flowers. 
The insects, going from flower to flower, carry with 
them the pollen and thus fertilize the flowers, as we say. 
It has been argued, therefore, that those plants that hap- 
pen to be attractive by reason of fragrance or color stood 
a better chance of surviving than others, being more 
likely to be pollenized by insects and so to bear seeds. 
One hundred thousand plants, it is said, could not exist 



156 JUDGMENT 

but for the bees — the rise of such insects, exhibiting 
marvelous intelHgence, it is thought, we have to thank 
for our flowers. It is also not at first known, but has to 
be learned, that the leaves of plants absorb gases from 
the air, particularly carboniferous gas. 

Furthermore, plants for the most part are constituted 
out of air and water. People, indeed, say that they can- 
not live on wind, and that beside water they must have 
something else, the truth being, however, that they are 
actually living on little else than these very things, the 
food of animals coming in the last resort from vege- 
tables. 

How many other things there are which we have had 
to learn about the modes of life peculiar to plants ! The 
strange adaptation which a plant has to circumstances, 
for instance, is one of these. Take the water-nut which 
grows at the bottom of streams. It has on it certain 
little balloons which, filling with air in the spring, raise 
the plant to the surface of the water, where it blossoms 
and brings forth its fruit. The bearing season over, the 
balloons fill with water and the plant descends to the 
bottom of the stream to escape the rigors of winter. 

The great importance of plants on account of the 
properties which they contain is another matter which 
is learned in detail. For example, we have the case of 
the discovery of the virtues of the bark of a tree, the 
same having cured of a fever the wife of one Chinchon, 
a governor of Peru, the tree henceforth being called 
Cinchona in honor of the woman — a tree from whose 
bark is made quinine, the greatest febrifuge and anti- 
periodic known to therapeutics. 

In the case of animal life, also, it is plain that a series 



JUDGMENT 157 

of judgments is made by us, one predicate after another 
being added as we advance in knowledge of the animal 
kingdom. 

We should not at first have had any intimation of 
the vast diversity possible to animals. As regards size, 
should we ever have thought that there are animals so 
small that even millions of them exist in an ounce of 
sand, animals so small as to be invisible to the naked 
eye? The inequality in size between a whale and an 
ant even is what must seem fabulous, yet the ant is as 
much of an animal as is a whale. As regards length 
of life, what a difference in animals! The may-fly at 
the best does not live more than a week — within that 
time are embraced all its joys and sorrows. On the 
contrary, an elephant, as Lotze remarks, which eats out 
of the hand of a child to-day, may have eaten out of 
that child's great-grandfather's hand when that great- 
grandfather was himself a child. A crow and a may-fly 
may come to consciousness on the very same day, but 
in the ordinary course of things the crow will live five 
or ten thousand times as long as the May-fly. As 
regards type, what contrast in animals! Who would 
have believed but for the testimony of his sense that 
animals could exist in the form of mollusks? What a 
contrast between a dog and a clam! Yet one of these 
is as much an animal as the other. Nay, there are ani- 
mals in the sea which for all the world resemble melons 
or cucumbers, except that they have certain long strings 
attached to them by means of which they lasso crabs. 
What is more, there are animals in the sea not to be 
distinguished even from bushes. Variety within the 
same type of animal is also marked. That, for instance, 



158 JUDGMENT 

whales belong to the order of beasts was not to have 
been believed, we being inclined to consider them fishes. 
Certain naturalists, indeed, have held that whales and 
swine have descended from the same ancestors, it being 
supposed that whales once lived on the land. Quite, as 
strange is the fact that there are beasts which fly in the 
air, the bats, for example. What is more, duck-moles, 
although beasts, have yet bills like those of birds; we 
should have thought that such animals were mythologi- 
cal, truth in this case being as strange as fiction, perhaps 
even more so. 

Not only the variety of animal life is great but also 
its uniformity. First, every animal has a cellular struct- 
ure, is, in other words, made up of cells, man as well 
as the amcebe. Each of these cells is a ball of protoplasm, 
the same usually covered with what may be called a skin. 
It would require three thousand of these cells to equal 
the head of a pin in size. A cell increases in size a 
certain amount and then divides in two, this being the 
way in which animals grow. Cells are combined into 
tissues, tissues into membranes, membranes into organs, 
those animals which consist of a single cell — and there 
are such — having no organs of any kind, the animal being 
stomach and everything else at the same time — a jack- 
of-all-trades. Secondly, the materials of which all ani- 
mals are made are the same — air and water, little else. 
The cells of the body are continually arising, continually 
wasting away. It is, therefore, as if a gust of wind 
and a stream of water are all the while the one blowing 
and the other flowing through the body, the body for 
the time being consisting of the wind and water in it. 
Thirdly, a characteristic of all animals is the possession 



JUDGMENT 159 

of mind, capacity to feel, usually to know, and to act. 
A mosquito, for instance, certainly knows something and 
does something, has therefore a mind, quite as much as 
Napoleon had one, however superior Napoleon's mind 
might have been to the mosquito's. A certain animal 
there is, consisting of a single cell, living inside worms, 
the same as worms live inside other animals, yet, strange 
as it may seem, it is possessed of a mind. Legs it has 
none, hands it has none, head it has none, no organs of 
any kind does it have, yet it does have a mind. Prac- 
tically but for a moment does an animal have the same 
body, that is to say, the same oxygen, hydrogen, nitro- 
gen, and carbon, but forever does it have the same mind. 

Now each one of these details about plants or about 
animals gives us a new notion with regard to the one 
or the other. For each of them we put a new predicate 
into our notion of plant or into our notion of animal, 
as the case may be; that is to say, we form a judgment 
about the one or the other which we express in a propo- 
sition whereof a predicate is affirmed of a subject. 

Judgment about plants and animals, it is known, 
except in some minor particulars, was not arrived at by 
mankind but gradually, the time taken to get a tolerably 
good judgment of them having been long, and what was 
once true of mankind on this subject, it is plain, is still 
true of individuals on many subjects. 

Those of like judgments naturally form a clique, 
whence it comes about that society is divided into sets, 
as it were, any one of which disparages the others, 
a truth which, it is said, Shakespeare meant to set 
forth in his comedy known as " A Midsummer Night's 
Dream." 



l60 JUDGMENT 

T'here remains, beside the inorganic and the organic, 
the mental. Moreover, the mental activities of men are 
directed, among other things, to practical affairs and to 
artistic matters. 

First, then, it is known that a person of judgment 
has much better notions relative to practical affairs than 
a person lacking this judgment. Those who lend money, 
when inquiring into a farmer's circumstances, let him 
have the money more readily provided the improvements 
on his lands be not too good, considering that, if he 
has put up with more moderate ones, he has better judg- 
ment and is, accordingly, more likely to be able to pay 
what he owes. 

People often mistake in their estimates. It was said 
of a certain man, for example, that he was a good 
farmer, the opinion prevailing merely because every- 
thing was kept picked up on his farm, everything in 
order, the buildings in repair and well painted. It was 
not known that a large mortgage was on the farm. The 
fact is, a farmer may be making a profit, and must there- 
fore be said to be succeeding in his undertaking, although 
his premises are badly kept. 

It was said of a certain man that he was a good 
financier ; all were loud in his praise. He paid his debts 
promptly, had everything looking well about him. The 
truth, however, was that his financial ability was small. 
He had started out with a good property, had not lost 
it, to be sure, yet during his whole life, if all his accu- 
mulations were taken into account, he had not made on 
the average more than fifty or sixty dollars a year, that 
is to say, not twenty cents a day. 

Persons of poor judgment put great stress on having 



JUDGMENT l6l 

a house furnished in a particular way, not taking into 
account that one can sleep just as well on a bedstead 
which cost five dollars as on one which cost fifty. Car- 
pets and wall-paper and what not are by many deemed 
essential, whereas in some countries they are rarely met 
with. 

Many persons will not have flour which is not per- 
fectly white, with them the only thing indispensable is 
its color. To those who have judgment, however, flour 
not so white is deemed better, that which has in it more 
of the good qualities of the wheat. Rye bread is de- 
spised by a great many on account of its dark color, 
notwithstanding its nutritious quality. Warm bread, 
although hurtful to the health, is yet preferred by many, 
it having been found necessary in Prussia to have a law 
against people's selling it. Cake in which yellow paint 
was put once had an extensive sale, notwithstanding 
the fact that it was so deleterious to health, the reason 
being that the color of the cake was so brilliant. Of 
the very same potatoes one man declared that they were 
the best that he ever saw, another man that they were 
the worst. The quality of the potatoes for food was 
excellent, but their skins were rough and they had on 
them some dirt. The man who considered them the 
worst that he ever saw evidently bought potatoes merely 
to look at. Some persons cannot understand how it was 
possible that the aged Emperor of Germany could have 
made a meal on rye bread and sausages. Some persons, 
too, think there cannot be a meal made without a table- 
cloth and about so many dishes and so many knives, 
forks, and spoons, whereas Germans often make a meal 
with hardly any of these things. 



1 62 JUDGMENT 

Much the same want of judgment is observed respect- 
ing clothing. A certain peasant, we are told, could not 
comprehend how it was that a noted divine could preach, 
seeing how badly he was dressed. Many persons, it is 
said, turned away from hearing Barrow, a very eloquent 
English preacher, on account of the meanness of his 
attire. They probably went to church not for the pur- 
pose of hearing a sermon, but for the purpose of view- 
ing the exhibit of a tailor shop. The Egyptians would 
not receive Agesilaus as their general, despite his emi- 
nent capabilities, seeing that he was poorly clad, was 
lame, not prepossessing in looks. Once the lackey of a 
king, having observed Bonaparte, bespattered with mud, 
helping take care of the wounded on a battle-field, held 
up his hands in horror, crying out, "Is it possible that 
this man is Emperor of France ! " When the army of 
Thomas was in danger of starving to death at Chatta- 
nooga and Grant and Sherman came to relieve it, the 
officers of Thomas's army had great misgivings, observ- 
ing how shabbily Grant and Sherman were dressed. 

As to judgment about clothes, many place it alto- 
gether on the price, the very same article being with 
them inferior if it costs less. Merchants, therefore, put 
the same thing on sale in different parts of the city at 
different prices, just as the venders of liquors are wont 
to sell five-cent, ten-cent, and fifteen-cent drinks all out 
of the same keg. 

Judgment about the nature of law is equally remark- 
able. We should not at first have thought that hearsay 
evidence is untrustworthy, we should have thought that 
it is as good as any. We should at first not have thought 
that the making of an absolutely new law is well nigh 



JUDGMENT 163 

impossible, legislation being hampered by principles and 
precedents. 

Political judgment is often wanting, note the prating 
about the divine right of kings, all the divine right there 
is being that of properly constituted authority. We 
might as well talk about the divine right of constables 
as about the divine right of kings. 

One of the most commonly discussed of practical 
matters is what one shall make the outcome of his life, 
a theme on which a strange lack of judgment is mani- 
fest. We are told, for example, of a certain boy who 
looked forward to manhood as the time when he might 
go to California overland, riding in a covered wagon 
and sleeping in it nights, to do which seemed to him 
to be the height of all human achievement. Another 
boy desired that he might be the father of eight sons, 
so that they with him might constitute a baseball team. 
Still another boy, urged to get an education, declared 
that he did not care for it. " Why," said he, " there is 
so and so," naming a certain clown in the town, " he 
never went to school but two days in his life, and you 
can't hardly find a smarter man." It would be incompre- 
hensible to many persons that there are twice a year at 
Berlin courses of lectures on such subjects as hieroglyph- 
ics, dogmatics, and quaternions, attended by thousands. 

Respecting artistic matters, how much need there is 
of judgment is generally admitted. 

Many, could they have seen the Parthenon of Athens 
in all its glory, when as yet it had not been despoiled 
by the hand of Turk or by the hand of Venetian, would 
doubtless have been under the necessity of having its 
good points explained to them. 



164 JUDGMENT 

The statues erected in parks are by some found fault 
with, by others praised, whence it is plain that one or 
the other of these must be mistaken. 

Wendell Phillips,, speaking of the statues of Boston, 
characterized them to this effect. That of Horace Mann 
shows him as if he had just gotten out of bed and had 
brought with him a good share of the bedclothes; that 
of George Washington shows him as staring up the 
street, his legs at a painful distance from his horse, and 
with none of that ease which he was wont to exhibit at 
Mount Vernon; that of Edward Everett shows him as 
if he were just rising up out of a barrel ; that of Charles 
Sumner shows him as a burly sailor, pointing his finger 
at the meat-market; and that of Daniel Webster, placed 
in the State-house near the stairway, has this advantage 
only, that persons going up the stairs, as they see it, are 
compelled to laugh, and are therefore cheered up and 
rested in making the ascent. 

To suppose that Wendell Phillips, though in • many 
respects a gifted man, was totally wrong in his judg- 
ment about these statues is indeed permissible, but the 
main point to be insisted upon is this, that at least he 
or those who differ with him lack in judgment. 

Here indeed we have a remarkable instance how neces- 
sary it is to take into account the process of judgment 
if we are to understand the mind, a thing which has 
usually been neglected. 

A great painting has lately obtained celebrity from the 
report that it was bought for a hundred thousand dollars, 
people going in great numbers to see it, no doubt pay- 
ing out in admission fees more than the reputed price 
of it; but it has since come out that the sale was only 



JUDGMENT 165 

nominal, the painter really getting no great sum for it. 
Except for the belief that it cost so much, few would 
have admired it. 

The operas of Wagner have received very different 
judgments from different people, showing that some of 
them are lacking in critical power. For example, the 
operas are held by certain persons — as indeed they were 
by Wagner himself — to be the music of the future, the 
end of all musical attainment, contrasted with whose 
opinion, however, is that of Tolstoi. 

Tolstoi pronounces Wagner's " Niebling's Ring," for 
instance, to be a model work of counterfeit art. For 
what do we have, says he, but an actor beating an im- 
possible sword with an impossible hammer, at the same 
time strangely opening his mouth and uttering some- 
thing incomprehensible? Then we have him sawing 
up into pieces the broken sword, which he heats and 
forges (not this, indeed, but the pretence of doing it), 
while at the same time he accompanies his action 
with the unintelligible singing of " Heiho ! Heiho ! 
Heiho!" 

Wagner has gained a great reputation, says Tolstoi, 
because he has been able to command all the resources 
of counterfeit art. The audience becomes hypnotized, 
says he, listening to one of these operas, just as we may 
suppose it would be hypnotized were it to listen for sev- 
eral hours to the ravings of a maniac delivered with 
great oratorical power. 

As to what is urged by critics, namely, that one must 
hear the operas much to get their full effect, Tolstoi 
acknowledges that the point is well taken, but that the 



1 66 JUDGMENT 

same kind of effect can be more readily realized, and 
with less expense, by getting drunk. 

Although the poems of Homer were among the first 
of literary productions to show judgment, yet Zoilus 
gave an unfavorable opinion of them. He is, declares 
Victor Hugo, as certain to be remembered as Homer 
himself, it being impossible to forget so great a dunce. 

Matthew Arnold relates that he was once under the 
tyranny of Bentham's wisdom, but was delivered from 
it the moment he read in his writings that Plato talked 
nonsense. He realized that there were some matters 
about which even Bentham knew nothing. 

Tacitus informs us that persons were found who main- 
tained that the style of Cicero was redundant, turgid, 
diffuse, inelegant, and egotistic. This, be it remem- 
bered, was said of the greatest of all orators, Demos- 
thenes in a few points only excepted, the greatest master 
of composition that the world has ever known. If he 
was wrong on so many points, what chance exists that 
anybody else ever can be right? 

Hume asserted that Shakespeare was wholly ignorant 
of theatrical art and conduct, that we probably over- 
estimate his genius on account of his defects, it being 
true that things often appear more gigantic on account 
of being disproportioned and misshapen. Dryden com- 
plains of the lameness of the plots of Shakespeare, made 
up, as he thinks, of ridiculous, incoherent stories, founded 
often on impossibilities. The only reason, says he, why 
the Elizabethan age is called the Golden Age of poetry 
is that people, being then content with acorns, knew not 
the use of bread. Shaftesbury speaks of Shakespeare's 
rude, unpolished style, and antiquated form of wit. Cha- 



JUDGMENT 167 

teaubriand makes it an objection against Shakespeare 
that he did not know the gender, accent, nor exact mean- 
ing of words, on account of which he introduces poetic 
expressions haphazard into the most trivial situations. 
Pepys has recorded in his diary that he saw Shake- 
speare's " A Midsummer Night's Dream " played when 
Shakespeare was still living, and that it was the most 
insipid, ridiculous play that ever he saw in his whole 
life. Rymer considered the tragical flights of Shake- 
speare to be inferior to the neighings of a horse or the 
growling of a dog. Sardou asserts that Hamlet is an 
empty wind-bag hero whom Shakespeare has clothed in 
a dramatic fog and whom the German critics have stuffed 
with their cloudy notions, with all their uncertain disser- 
tations, with all the smoke of their pipes, and with all 
the obscurity of their beer-cellars. A Puritan expressed 
great contempt for the plays of Shakespeare on account 
of the metaphors which they contain. Somebody has 
ventured the opinion that the works of Shakespeare can- 
not live, seeing that they deal with foreign subjects, such 
as Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. An English news- 
paper observes that places can be found in England 
where the fame of Shakespeare seems to rest on the be- 
lief that he was some sort of a prize-fighter. It having 
been asked of a Dutchman what character in " Hamlet " 
he most admired, he replied, " The Ghost." 

Booth, we are told, was once playing " The Merchant 
of Venice " in a backwoods town of Virginia, and wished 
to take the steamer before he could conclude the whole. 
He therefore, by previous arrangement, had recourse to 
a trick. The trial scene coming on, Antonio said to Shy- 
lock, " I'll tell you what I'll do, provided you forego 



1 68 JUDGMENT 

the pound of flesh, I'll give you, in addition to what 
money is coming to you, fifty caddies of tobacco ! " " I'd 
be foolish," replied Shylock, " not to take it," where- 
upon the play was brought to a close, all who saw it 
being highly delighted, especially the captain himself, 
who, on the way down the river, told Booth that he 
" never knew before that there was so much in that 
Shakespeare." 

Mary Wortley Montagu said of Pope that he is all 
tune and no meaning; Shenstone, that no poet ever 
brought so much sense into the same number of lines. 
Voltaire declares that the " Essay on Man " is the most 
useful and sublime didactic poem ever written; Black, 
that it is a tedious and stilted effort. Taine says that 
we need much self-command not to throw down the 
" Dunciad " as insipid and even disgusting ; Williams, 
that the " Dunciad " is the greatest feat of the humorous 
imagination in English poetry. Johnson pronounces the 
translation of Homer as being the greatest work of its 
kind; Dennis pronounced it a failure. 

Objection was made by a teacher of Greek to the ren- 
dering which Pope makes of a certain passage in Homer, 
and being asked what the passage really meant, he con- 
veyed as good an idea of it as he could, whereupon the 
questioner exclaimed, "If that is what Homer meant, 
then Pope is a greater poet than Homer." 

It has been objected to Macaulay that certain trees 
which he mentions as oaks were really elms, that it is 
doubtful whether what William hunted were not really 
some other animals than stags. One of the most promi- 
nent defects of his history, says Croker, is its style, a 
point on which he is followed by others. On the con- 



JUDGMENT 169 

trary, the great writers of the world have expressed their 
admiration of the thoroughness of the researches of 
Macaulay and his general accuracy, while as regards his 
style, they consider it a marvel of perspicuity and effec- 
tiveness. 

Psychology, indeed, furnishes us a means of under- 
standing much when it acquaints us with the nature of 
the process of judgment, a process of such a kind that 
whereas one's opinion on one subject may be good, on 
another it may be worth nothing at all. 

The notion which one entertains on anything can be 
only general, somewhat vague, perhaps, without he has 
put into it those predicates which specify it, or, what is 
the same thing, bring it down to particulars. The star- 
tling and absurd statements which one often hears on 
various topics should, therefore, not in the least sur- 
prise him. 



CHAPTER VIII 

REASON 

Reasoning may well enough be defined as knowing 
by implication — knowing something from knowing some- 
thing else. To state the matter differently, through rea- 
soning we know a characteristic of a thing by means 
of a characteristic of that characteristic of it; to say 
this still another way, through reasoning we know a 
predicate of a thing by means of a predicate of that 
predicate. To take an example, a man — half-asleep per- 
haps — discovers that his house is on fire, not merely be- 
cause he smells smoke — that might be from his lamp — 
but because he smells smoke with a woody scent. This 
woody scent is here the characteristic of the characteristic 
of the thing, the predicate of the predicate. Reasoning, 
in short, consists in assigning an attribute to a thing on 
the ground of some other attribute of it, the attribute 
of mortality, for instance, to Socrates on the ground of 
his attribute of humanity. 

The expression of a reasoning in the simplest manner 
was called by Aristotle an enthymeme — for example, 
" Socrates was mortal, because he was a man ; " the 
more definite expression of it, a syllogism — for example, 
" All men are mortal ; Socrates was a man, therefore 
Socrates was mortal." 

The characteristics of things are represented in the 
mind by notions, so that the process of reasoning is said 



REASON 171 

to be the forming of one notion out of two others. The 
notion of woody smell, for instance, merged into that 
of smoky smell, gives us the notion of smoking wood, 
that is to say, the notion of wood on fire. Notions, 
moreover, are images in the mind for which words stand. 

Reasoning takes place on theory and from practice. 
As it takes place more especially on theory, it is quanti- 
tative, qualitative, and relational. As it takes place more 
especially from experience, it is inductive. Reasonings, 
therefore, naturally divide themselves into four great 
classes — first, reasoning from equalization ; secondly, rea- 
soning from consistency; thirdly, reasoning from di- 
lemma; fourthly, reasoning from example. 

Reasoning from equalization consists in recognizing 
that two quantities are equal because each of them sepa- 
rately is equal to the same third quantity, A equals B, 
for example, because A as well as B equals C. 

We may take as an illustration what is known as the 
theorem of Pythagoras, We draw a right-angled tri- 
angle, and upon each of its sides a square, then draw 
certain other lines. We now show that the square upon 
the hypothenuse is just equal to certain spaces which 
themselves are just equal to the square upon the base 
added to the square upon the perpendicular, whence 
things which are equal to the same thing being equal to 
each other, the square on the hypothenuse of a right- 
angled triangle is proved to be equal to the sum of the 
squares on the other two sides. 

The solutions of trigonometry, as is well known, de- 
pend on this theorem, whence for the results of trigo- 
nometry Pythagoras may claim credit. As, then, engi- 
neering depends on trigonometry, engineers themselves 



172 REASON 

get their credentials from Pythagoras, he having in effect 
given them permission to measure inaccessible heights, 
distances which cannot be traversed. Indeed, Pythag- 
oras gave mankind permission to lay out roads, build 
bridges, and dig tunnels. As, moreover, the measure- 
ment of our lands in the last resort depends on trigo- 
nometry, the titles of our lands are actually derived 
from Pythagoras. 

A system of triangles has been laid out by surveyors, 
which extends from England to Russia, likewise a sys- 
tem of triangles which extends from Maine to California, 
which two systems are to be pushed into Asia to meet. 
Particular surveys, as of farms and lots, depend on these 
general ones. 

Let us pause to reflect that the reasoning of Pythag- 
oras, on which trigonometry rests, itself rests on the 
principle that things which are equal to the same thing 
are equal to each other. Who would have thought that 
on a foundation so slight such a mighty superstructure 
could have been erected? It might have been objected 
to Pythagoras that it is the merest truism that equal 
quantities are equal, that no possible good could come 
from the consideration of a truth so barren; but the 
spaces which he found to be equal, either of them, to the 
third space, are very different the one from the other — 
herein lay his chance of success. That A equals A may 
seem a very trite proposition; not so, however, if the 
one A is made up in a manner very different from the 
other A. It might have been objected, also, to Pythag- 
oras that he was but wasting his time considering ab- 
stractly the question of squares on a triangle. The way 
for him to do, it might have been said, was to go out 



REASON 173 

into the fields, measure pieces of land, observe how 
things are! For how could it be possible that, sitting 
in his easy-chair, in a room where, perhaps, he could 
not even see out-doors, he could yet prove what must 
be true upon the moon ? 

According to tradition, when Pythagoras had proved 
that the square upon the hypothenuse of a right-angled 
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares upon the 
other two sides, he returned thanks to heaven, making 
an expensive sacrifice. The vast results which have 
flowed from his discovery well justify the ardor which 
he exhibited. For through him mankind has been able 
to measure the earth and to weigh the mountains. 

Pythagoras, moreover, precipitated a crisis in human 
affairs — humanity could never be what it was before. He 
had discovered mathematical reasoning, thereby chang- 
ing the course of history. Euclid afterward worked out 
that great geometry which is still used in our schools, 
either by way of translation or by way of adaptation. 
Following the path opened by Pythagoras, the Greeks 
discovered reasoning in general, a circumstance which ex- 
plains all about them. The governments of the Greeks 
were democratic, governments by discussion, the prin- 
ciple of which is that an appeal is made to reason. The 
architecture, sculpture, and painting of the Greeks were 
characterized by perfect symmetry — inconsistencies, that 
is to say, contradictions, were excluded, reason being the 
faculty which detects them. Similarly it was that the 
literature of the Greeks was rational — it had unity and 
point — the small points, moreover, were subordinated to 
the great ones. The Romans applied reason to law, car- 
rying back jurisprudence to principles of eternal justice. 



174 REASON 

the same as Euclid had carried back geometry to the 
principles of space. The Romans likewise employing 
the principle of reason in the state, arrived at unity of 
administration, introducing consistency into the man- 
agement of their affairs. Their notion of the unity of 
superintendence led to their choice of what are known 
as the emperors, though these were not emperors in the 
modern sense. They were merely the managers of the 
republic, somewhat like our presidents. Pythagoras 
having, then, set in motion the course of events which 
finally culminated in the Roman empire, well exemplifies 
the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. 

Pythagoras lived in Crotona, Italy, where he had as 
disciples six hundred others, who, together with their 
families, all lived in the same house. They all observed 
certain rules — rose before the sun, recited verses, lis- 
tened to music, thought how each might best pass the 
day; took then solitary walks, meditating the while ; next 
they came together for conversation, took gymnastic 
exercises, and dined on bread, honey, and water, meat 
not being eaten; in the afternoon they looked after their 
affairs, took their baths, and performed religious rites. 
Before going to bed each took a retrospect of the day, 
what he had missed, what he had gained. It was en- 
joined on a new disciple to keep still about the truths 
communicated to him; moreover, these truths were first 
given to him in symbols which might mean one thing 
or another, so that the curiosity of the learner was ex- 
cited. If he persevered, however, the abstract principles 
of truth were in time revealed to him. Pythagoras 
talked to his hearers from behind a curtain, so that no 
gesticulation, no change of features might impress them, 



REASON 175 

nothing but the truth. When he appeared among his 
followers he wore a white gown and on his head a gilded 
circlet. His beard, moreover, was white, long, and 
flowing. 

For the great services which he rendered mankind he 
received no pay, indeed, did not ask any; like Agassiz 
after him, he did not have time to make money. Some 
persons, he said, came into the world to sell goods, others 
to eat; as for himself, he came into the world to look 
on. He was an inspector of mankind, with a view to 
bettering society. 

Another illustration of reasoning from equalization 
may be given. It is proved that a geometric ratio will 
amount to more than an arithmetic one, a geometric 
ratio increasing by an increasing amount, an arithmetic 
by a fixed amount only. For, as a geometric series goes 
on, the point is reached where its increment equals or 
surpasses the increment of the arithmetic one; accord- 
ingly, this increment, being all the while multiplied, will 
not only submerge the previous accumulation of the 
arithmetic series, but its future accumulation as well. 

That an arithmetic series cannot equal a geometric one 
may seem a very trivial matter, yet it is fraught with 
momentous consequences. 

Malthus pointed out that whereas animals have the 
power continually to double their number, the land has 
not the power continually to double its crop, animals 
increasing in geometric ratio, food in arithmetic only. 
The matter is made still worse by the fact that there are 
many kinds of animals virtually dependent on the same 
kind of food. It is, therefore, as if the food of the 
earth w?re divided into a certain number of rations, the 



176 REASON 

animals to eat them exceeding that number. As, how- 
ever, animals cannot live without food, therefore neg- 
lecting the matter of insufficient nutrition, the truth 
arrived at is merely this, that animal life presses on the 
means of subsistence, whence the struggle among ani- 
mals to get a living. 

Darwin teaches that all the manifold kinds of animals 
have been formed by this struggle. The discovery of 
this, with whatever is accessory to it, is to be set down 
to the credit of the reasoning that a geometric ratio 
must exceed an arithmetic one. 

By means of this reasoning, also, we are enabled to 
know things regarding the past, present, and future his- 
tory of mankind which could hardly otherwise have come 
to light. 

The population of the earth was once very small, 
indeed, did not come to be considerable till people learned 
how to farm or to keep flocks. We know this because 
great populations, not being able to subsist without a 
proportionate supply of food, could not have means 
whereby they might live previous to farming or to keep- 
ing of flocks. Neither the spontaneous productions of 
nature nor what game could be taken would have been 
sufficient to supply their wants. Or, perhaps we might 
better say, not till men learned to till the soil and to do 
so systematically did there exist enormous populations 
on the globe, before that time there not having been food 
enough to support them. For instance, a portion of 
America where once only forty thousand natives could 
subsist by hunting and fishing, afterward supported three 
millions of colonists, these subsisting on agriculture and 
manufacturing. 



REASON 177 

We may draw a subsidiary inference here. That part 
of the world in which agriculture first got a sure foot- 
ing, presumably Mesopotamia, was the place where civ- 
ilization originated, great populations and life in great 
cities being necessary to the birth of civilization, neither 
of which could obtain without agriculture, agriculture 
being necessary to great populations, great populations 
to cities. 

We have here something which may account for the 
fact that so many peoples trace their origin back to 
regions lying around the Caspian. 

We have explained, too, why the population of Eng- 
land is now very large in comparison with what it was 
in the Elizabethan age; the machinery and other inven- 
tions of recent times greatly increase the food-supply of 
the world, enabling one to do what once it took many 
to accomplish. 

When, moreover, the entire earth shall have been 
brought to the highest state of cultivation, and when 
all the means of saving and organizing labor shall have 
been exhausted, the population of the earth will not 
increase any more. 

Such a state of things, indeed, has already practically 
been reached in France. There is a farm to about every 
six persons, usually owned by the proprietor himself. 
More than half of the entire population of the country 
is engaged in tilling the soil. This result obtains from 
the fact that the farms are small, the average contain- 
ing not much more than twenty acres, half the farms 
less than six acres, many as little as two and one-half. 
The farms are used to the very best advantage, and, as 
the population does not increase, each generation is in 



178 REASON 

a little better circumstances than the one which pre- 
ceded it. 

Thus does the proof that a geometric ratio outruns 
an arithmetic one furnish us with clues to much of 
importance. 

Reasoning from consistency degends on the principle 
that the universe is a closed system of causes, each cause 
producing its effect. 

We have this reasoning exemplified in what is known 
as circumstantial evidence, such as is taken cognizance 
of in our courts of justice, an instance of which may 
be given. 

Several men broke into a house in the dead of night, 
presumably to rob the inmates, but being discovered, an 
affray ensued in which the man of the house was killed. 
Those who had broken into the house then ran away, 
leaving behind them a piece of candle. Strangely enough, 
this was found exactly to match another piece which was 
in the house of a man supposedly concerned in the crime. 
The original candle, it seemed, had been cut in two by 
a knife, showing the wick pressed in the same direction 
and left in the same position in both pieces. The kind 
of candles of which these pieces were samples was kept 
by one dealer only in the village. Of him, it was shown 
that a member of the man's family in which the second 
piece of candle was found had purchased a candle a few 
days before the night in question. No satisfactory ex- 
planation could be made why they had bought it or to 
what use they intended to put it. The man whose fam- 
ily purchased the candle was in bad repute. Remarks 
previously made by him caused suspicions to rest upon 
him. It was maintained, moreover, that his voice was 



REASON 179 

recognized in the house where the man was murdered 
about the time the murder took place. 

How could all these circumstances perfectly harmo- 
nize with the supposition that he was implicated in the 
crime unless he was actually implicated in it? 

Of course, if it could have been shown that even the 
most trivial circumstance in the case was at variance 
with the hypothesis that the man was privy to the mur- 
der the proof would have failed. A reductio ad ab- 
surdum would have been instituted. For this kind of 
reasoning requires consistency in all things. Could it 
have been shown, for example, that a great many can- 
dles of the kind in question had been sold in the village 
by different dealers, and repeatedly to the family sus- 
pected, the evidence against the man would not, to say 
the least, have been as good as it was. Could it have 
been shown that the cutting of a candle in two with an 
ordinary knife will generally leave the wick and other 
materials in about the same condition in which they were 
in this particular case, the evidence would have been 
somewhat shaken. Could it have been shown that a 
single thread of wick in one of the pieces of candle had 
a position not consistent with this piece matching the 
other, the evidence would certainly have failed. Could 
it have been shown that the materials in one piece of 
candle were different from those in the other piece, noth- 
ing would have been made out. 

When we consider the great number of cases coming 
before our courts in which the whole matter turns on 
such reasoning as this, we are made aware of the great 
importance of it. Famous cases, indeed, might be cited, 
such as that of Freeman, in which Seward made one of 



160 REASON 

the greatest speeches of all time — of the kind of speech, 
perhaps, the very greatest. 

We have another instance of reasoning from consist- 
ency, when by means of such reasoning a lost and dead 
language is deciphered, as, for example, the Egyptian. 

Napoleon's engineers, while engaged in throwing up 
breastworks in Egypt, discovered by accident what is 
called the Rossetta Stone, a piece of basalt upon which 
something was inscribed in Egyptian, together with a 
translation in Greek. For ages nobody whosoever had 
been able to read a word of Egyptian. How, then, was 
this now to be read? How, if not on the principle of 
consistency? What was inscribed upon the stone must 
be consistent with itself, every part and circumstance 
with the whole, every part and circumstance with every 
other part and circumstance. Indeed, this must be so, 
or the Egyptians themselves could have made nothing 
out of it. Everything in the Greek must have something 
equivalent to it in the Egyptian, or the Greeks them- 
selves could not have gotten from it the same sense 
which was contained in the Egyptian, the translation 
would have been absurd. What is more, it was actually 
stated in the Greek that it was an equivalent of the 
Egyptian. 

The name of Ptolemy, which occurs in the Greek, 
would correspond to some word in the Egyptian, this 
word, moreover, could be found in the Egyptian from 
its position. And the word being discovered, of course 
the characters by which it is spelled would be discovered 
also. On the same principle, indeed, from other proper 
names in the inscription still other characters could be 
made out. 



REASON 18 1 

The inscription upon the Rossetta Stone is a decree 
of the priests in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, one hun- 
dred and ninety-five years prior to the birth of our 
Saviour. 

The same process which was apphed by scholars to 
the Rossetta Stone was applied by them to other stones. 
The decree of Canopus is an instance. Before the days 
of Christianity the priests of Egypt held a conference 
in the town of Canopus, at which they passed a resolu- 
tion eulogistic of Ptolemy Euergetes, having the same 
inscribed upon a stone both in Egyptian and in Greek. 
Twenty-one hundred and four years afterward, almost 
to a month, that is to say, in our own times, Lepsius, 
the German savant, discovered this very same stone at 
Tanis in Egypt. 

Pillars of stone were also found upon which Darius, 
the great organizer of the Persian empire, had put, 
twenty-four hundred years ago, an inscription, both in 
Egyptian and in Persian. These inscriptions, as was said, 
besides their other uses in the decipherment, furnished 
proper names which could be spelled out in Egyptian. 

The meaning of Egyptian words other than proper 
names could, on principles of consistency, be come at in 
several ways. The Coptic language, as found in a trans- 
lation of the Bible, being descended from the Egyptian, 
has somewhat the same names for things as the Egyp- 
tian itself. The Egyptian names for things, moreover, 
could be gotten from the tombs, where are still pictures 
of most objects with the names attached. These words 
must agree with the Coptic, or nearly so. 

What was read upon the Rossetta Stone, what was 
read upon the stone found at Tanis, what was read upon 



1 82 REASON 

the pillars of Darius, and what was read in the tombs 
would have to be consistent, the one with the other, as 
well as with the translations in Greek, Persian, or Coptic. 

Following up these clues, scholars have been able to 
read the lost language of Egypt. They read, for ex- 
ample, on the walls of Karnak the poem of Pentaur 
which praises the deeds of Rameses the Great. Un- 
wrapping a mummy, moreover, they read the funeral 
ritual of the Egyptians which was used thousands of 
years before the birth of Christ. They read also in the 
tombs around the great pyramid the names of men 
attached to their portraits, men, indeed, who lived as 
long before Rameses as Rameses before Christ. 

A complete dictionary of the Egyptian language is in 
process of completion, the meaning of the Egyptian 
words in their several applications being ascertained, 
thanks to reasoning from consistency. 

On the same principles it was that the Assyrian lan- 
guage was made known to us. The libraries of Nineveh 
and Babylon, together with those of their suburbs, had 
been buried for ages. Xenophon makes no mention of 
Nineveh, although he passed by the site of it long before 
the Christian era — even then it was covered with earth. 
The libraries were there in the ground, imperishable be- 
cause they had been written upon clay, the which had 
then been burned. Xenophon, however, could not have 
read the libraries, even if he had known about them — 
their treasures were apparently locked up for good. It 
was not till our own times that the language was de- 
ciphered, it requiring the labor of many men for many 
years. Grammars and dictionaries were found in the 
libraries, and, strangely enough, certain mistakes in them, 



REASON 183 

a result which also well illustrates the wonders of rea- 
soning. Nebuchadnezzar's bricks were found with his 
name stamped upon them, although he lived so long ago 
as when the temple of Solomon was still standing. 

The principle of consistency is much more used than 
we should have supposed, a great deal of reasoning rest- 
ing upon it rather than upon the principle of induction. 
Astronomy is a case. When we take into account that 
looking at the planets with a good telescope is like look- 
ing at objects with the naked eye twenty-five hundred 
miles off, it becomes apparent how little we actually see 
with our eyes. Astronomy rests rather upon consistency 
of theory than upon observation, we assuming that to 
be the truth about the heavenly bodies which perfectly 
harmonizes with itself. The same thing is somewhat 
true of physiology. It would be difficult to observe all 
the processes of the body from beginning to end and in 
connection with one another. Our physiology is in great 
part merely a theory which is consistent with itself. 
Geology exemplifies the same thing. Men pretend to 
say what was the climate of Greenland millions of years 
before they were born, a climate somewhat resembling 
that of Florida, such as it might have been pleasant to 
pass a winter in, had there been anybody on earth to 
enjoy it. Agassiz made us believe that he knew how 
the bowlders got where they now are, although no record 
regarding them has come down to us from the misty 
past. Physics may hkewise be appealed to in this con- 
nection. Men undertake to say that throughout the uni- 
verse no particle of existence is ever lost, though mani- 
festly they have not been watching every particle of 
existence from all eternity to see just what became of 



184 REASON 

it. Theology, as we know, proceeds much the same way. 
Men assure us what were the decrees of God in the 
dateless past, what in future will be the issues of the 
judgment. Reason, indeed, rivals clairvoyance, even if 
all that is claimed for clairvoyance be true. Reason, 
declared Cardinal Newman, reaches to the ends of the 
universe and to the throne of God beyond them. 

We have, in the third place, reasoning from dilemma, 
disjunctive reasoning, as it is called, a subject naturally 
falling under two heads, non-mathematical and mathe- 
matical. 

Of the first kind, the best known instance is that 
of Demosthenes against ^schines — " ^schines either 
joined in the public rejoicing or he did not. If he 
joined in it, he was inconsistent with himself; if he did 
not join in it, he was unpatriotic. On either horn, one 
of which must be true, he was at fault." 

The second part of the subject, that of mathematical 
dilemmas, is of especial importance. 

It is an example of this kind of reasoning when we 
prove that two triangles are equal because the one is 
neither greater nor less than the other, only three alter- 
natives being possible, either that the triangles are equal, 
or that one is greater than the other, or that one is less 
than the other. 

The method by which Archimedes proved that the 
ratio of the diameter to the circumference is about 
3. 141 6 is an example of disjunctive reasoning. For the 
length of the perimeter of the regular inscribed or cir- 
cumscribed polygon is determined by the length of one 
of its sides. A side of the polygon, however, is a side 
of one of the equal triangles into which the polygon can 



REASON 185 

be divided. The side of the polygon, moreover, is deter- 
mined by the length of half the diameter of the circle. 
Out of the equal parts, therefore, into which the circum- 
ference falls, Archimedes deduced the length of the cir- 
cumference, the dilemma being that either the whole or 
all its parts are the same. 

Mathematical reasoning from dilemmas has applica- 
tions to business. Take, for example, the device by 
which one may pay for a house in installments. If a 
man pay seven hundred and thirty-six dollars for a house 
at once or pay one hundred dollars a year for ten years 
it is the same thing, counting interest at six per cent., 
whence he may have the privilege of making use of this 
alternative — dilemma, if we wish to call it so. What is 
much the same thing, i.f a man pay eight dollars a month 
for ten years, he pays seven hundred and thirty-six dol- 
lars for his house and six per cent, interest on what debt 
remains till the whole is paid, this debt all the while 
decreasing — he pays about this much, indeed, on this 
plan. 

The Prussian Government, after the Napoleonic wars, 
obliged the great landlords to sell out part of their lands 
in small pieces to peasants, the landlords receiving from 
them a small sum each year for a term of years, the sums 
exactly paying for the lands, together with interest. 

What is called an endowment is arranged on the same 
plan. If one pay two hundred and fifty-six dollars and 
fifty cents to a trust company every year, this at six 
per cent, compound interest will amount to ten thousand 
dollars in twenty years. Anyone, accordingly, by pay- 
ing in a certain sum each year may at the end of a cer- 
tain time receive a certain sum. 



1 86 REASON 

On the same principle it is shown that a man sixty 
years old who has, since he was twenty-one, accumu- 
lated sixty thousand dollars, has in reality saved no 
more on the average than one dollar and seventy-five 
cents a day, money at four per cent. We have the in- 
stance also of a man who enjoyed exceptional advan- 
tages in business and who, after fifty years of active 
life, died worth three hundred thousand dollars. It is 
shown, however, by mathematical calculation that, with 
all his advantages, he saved on the average no more than 
one thousand dollars a year, the rate of interest being 
taken rather high. If at the beginning of the Christian 
era, one cent had been put out at compound interest, 
even at a very low rate, the amount of the same would 
now be enough to buy out everything on earth. 

The principle of paying by installments is also ex- 
tended to what is known as irredeemable bonds. If 
money be valued at two per cent., it is all one whether 
a bank receive two per cent, on money for a hundred 
years, getting at the end of that time the principal back, 
or receive a trifle more than two per cent, for a hun- 
dred years, not getting the principal back at all. 

Another case of reasoning from dilemma is exempli- 
fied in life insurance. Of any thousand persons of the 
same age about the same number will die in a given 
time. We know, therefore, beforehand, as it were, just 
how long each person will live, since from a business 
point of view it makes no difference whether one per- 
son die or another. On the whole, just so many will 
die in such a time anyhow. Every time of life, there- 
fore, has its expectancy, as we say. If one is thirty- 
three years old, he has the probability of living thirty- 



REASON 187 

three years, but if fifty-three years old, the probabihty 
of hving but nineteen years. On this basis it is that 
every man pays according to his age to receive a certain 
sum when he dies. For example, if one is twenty-five 
years old, he pays about twenty dollars a year; if fifty 
years old, about forty-five dollars; if sixty-nine years 
old, about one hundred and nineteen dollars — any 
one of them to receive at death one thousand dollars. A 
man who is ninety years old would have to pay about 
four hundred and eighty-five dollars a year to receive 
a thousand dollars at death. 

Not only is it known how many will die on the aver- 
age each year, but it is also known how many will die 
on the average in any specified time, say in twenty years. 
It is possible, therefore, to insure one for twenty years 
instead of for life, he receiving at the end of that time 
the sum for which he was insured, the same as if he 
had died. 

The principle of life insurance, it is plain, can be 
applied to a great many other subjects besides, it being 
known as the doctrine of general averages. The best 
known examples are fire and marine insurance. One by 
paying so much annually is entitled to receive a certain 
amount should his house or goods be burned, should his 
ship or goods be lost at sea. The theory is that just 
about so much property will on the average be destroyed 
by fire anyhow in a given number of years, about so 
much property in a given number of years be lost by 
shipwreck. 

The same principle is applied to the collection of 
debts. It is known, for example, that in a given busi- 
ness a certain percentage of the debts cannot be collected, 



185 REASON 

say fifty per cent., or one-half. If, therefore, as much 
again be charged, the matter of bad debts may be neg- 
lected. As high charges, however, have the tendency 
to keep those who will pay from making use of things, 
it is manifest that the principle more especially applies 
to a business wherein the loss by bad debts is small, say 
five per cent. 

The principle is also made use of in estimating things, 
the yield of crops, for example. Suppose that we nail 
four laths together so as to leave in the middle just one 
square foot. Taking this frame into the field, we may 
bring it down wherever we please, so that we enclose in 
it just one square foot of the oats, wheat, or what other 
grain grows in the field. Threshing this grain out and 
weighing or measuring it, we know the yield per square 
foot, multiplying which by the number of square feet in 
an acre we know the yield per acre. To be more 
accurate, we may try the same experiment in several 
places of the field and take the average result of these 
experiments. 

We have the case of a landlord detecting the theft of 
his tenant on the principle of general averages. Hav- 
ing computed the number of hills of maize on his land, 
and from trials in several places determined the yield 
per hill, he knew beforehand about how much his share 
of the maize should be, so that although the tenant 
claimed that his own crib contained no more than his 
own share, yet the landlord knew better. An investiga- 
tion, indeed, demonstrated that under one of the cribs 
the tenant had a cellar which he had filled with the 
surplus. 

It is often stated that in certain kinds of business, there 



REASON 189 

being a great many such, ninety-eight per cent, of all 
those who engage in them fail. The theory, however, 
may be ventured that such business, scientifically, though 
not morally, is of the nature of gambling. Those who 
engage in it are like a man tossing up a penny. On the 
average the penny comes down tails about as often as it 
does heads. The result will be that nobody engaging in 
such business will make anything. Not only ninety-eight 
per cent, of those engaging in it fail, but one hundred 
per cent. The few who seem to succeed in the business 
really do so on account of cheap living, cheap help, or 
something of the sort. 

Here we have the doctrine of chances, namely, that it 
is possible from the conditions of an event to express 
in numbers what is the probability of its happening. La 
Place, for example, undertook to show that, unless we 
assume the truth of the nebular hypothesis, the improba- 
bility of the planets being as they are is well nigh, if not 
actually, infinite. The probability that a hungry dog v/ill 
eat food when the same is placed before him has to be 
expressed by such a large number as to be practically 
infinity. We have, indeed, the joke of a German student, 
who said he would attend a lecture at the university pro- 
vided his dog did not eat the sausage which he was about 
to offer him. 

Reasoning from example, the inductive process, de- 
pends on the principle which we may designate as the 
sameness of causes — what is observed of a combination of 
things will always happen upon such combinations, like 
causes always producing like effects. 

This kind of reasoning finds illustration in the knowl- 
edge we have obtained of electricity and of chemistry. 



190 REASON 

Volta observed that two metals connected by wires, 
tin and copper say, if a moist substance be between them, 
generate a current of electricity. Galvanic batteries are, 
as a matter of fact, only an example of this, the metals 
used being ordinarily zinc and copper, the moist sub- 
stance between them vitriol water. Such a combination 
of things actually produces electricity — it will therefore 
always produce it, like causes being under the necessity 
of giving rise to like effects. This is a reasoning pos- 
sible to be made from one observation merely, provided 
that observation be thorough and exhaustive, the force 
of the reasoning not depending on the number of exam- 
ples, but on the identity of causes. 

Ampere discovered that a spiral current of electricity 
has just the same effect as a magnet, what is the same 
thing, that an electro-magnet is possible, that is to say, 
a magnet that can be made or unmade at pleasure. 

Faraday observed that breaking currents of magnets 
starts currents in the opposite direction. Magnets re- 
volving so as to pass an armature, or an armature so as 
to pass magnets, therefore, generate a current of elec- 
tricity, as we observe in the use of the dynamo. 

We have thus three simple reasonings from example 
which have revolutionized the world about us. The 
lighting of houses and streets by electricity, the moving 
of cars and wagons by it, and the sending of messages 
by it — these all are dependent on one or more of these 
simple reasonings. 

These men, then — ^Volta, Ampere, and Faraday — may 
be considered as a triumvirate, exercising government 
over utilities, it being by their perm^ission that we have 
our houses lighted, ride on cars, and forward messages. 



REASON 191 

The reasoning of Volta is practically the fundamental 
one, since it led to the others, but this reasoning itself 
was derived from an observation made by Galvani that 
the flesh of 'a frog placed between two metals produces 
a current of electricity. 

Galvani made the experiment of hanging skinned 
frogs on the railing of his balcony, thinking he might 
elicit some fact relative to animal electricity. The wind 
swaying the frogs to one side caused them to touch the 
upright rods. The frogs, being thus between two metals, 
twitched as if they were alive. This was the original 
battery, the frog battery, we may call it, the battery from 
which all others have descended. 

Galvani was led to make this experiment, as tradition 
has it, because his assistant, operating an electric ma- 
chine, had noticed that a skinned frog which he touched 
with his knife twitched and jerked its muscles. Madame 
Galvani, in skinning those frogs for dinner, did better 
than she knew, furnished her husband with the means 
of making one of the greatest discoveries on record. In 
its most primitive form, then, the reasoning on which 
the battery depends was made by Galvani, and it is in 
recognition of this service that the battery is called 
galvanic. 

It is among the curiosities of destiny that, though by 
means of this reasoning of Galvani so many men have 
been enriched and so many afforded conveniences, he 
himself was neglected and died in poverty, a proof of 
the saying, " He saved others, himself he could not 
save." At this late day, however, a statue to him has 
been erected in Bologna, where he made his famous 
reasoning. 



192 REASON 

Reasoning from example is equally important in the 
case of chemistry. Priestley observed that a certain form 
of mercury, known as red oxide, when it is sufficiently 
heated, gives off oxygen, a gas which he found supports 
combustion. As like causes produce like effects, it was 
established that whenever and wherever this kind of 
mercury is in this way heated oxygen is sure to be 
given off. 

It has been said that Priestley discovered oxygen, men 
speaking as if what he did was after the manner of his 
finding a coin in his path. This, however, is not what 
he actually accomplished. What he did was to make a 
reasoning, namely, that the heating of red oxide of 
mercury, as he heated it, will evermore cause it to give 
off oxygen. Any savage, indeed, might have observed 
all that Priestley saw without being any wiser. The point 
is that what Priestley brought to pass was not due to 
experiment merely. The experiment, for all we know, 
and probably, was made many times before. The rea- 
soning could not have been made without the experiment, 
to be sure, yet it was the reasoning from this experiment 
that was of chief importance. 

By observations similar to those of Priestley, though 
these were often complex, it has been ascertained how 
each of the so-called chemical elements, more than sev- 
enty-five in number, can be obtained. Not only so, but 
it has been ascertained how by the removal or addition 
of some elements useful materials can be obtained from 
certain things. We have thus, through simple reasoning 
from example, the chemical receipts for the making of 
commercial products. 

So many useful articles are manufactured by the use 



REASON 193 

of these receipts that the knowledge of the chiemist may 
be said to have revolutionized industry. 

The knowledge of the chemist over a wide range of 
subjects is ubiquitous and eternal. The chemist, although 
he has never been to Africa, will yet tell you in all con- 
fidence that a certain combination of materials will there 
produce water-gas the same as it does here. The par- 
ticular combination of materials and conditions which are 
known to produce it now will produce it a thousand years 
hence. He sees to the ends of the earth and to the re- 
motest ages of the future. He is clairvoyant and prophet. 

Were it true that all the reasonings which have estab- 
lished chemistry were actually made by Priestley and 
derived from him by others, then, it might be said, he 
gave mankind permission to have the things which, 
thanks to chemistry, they enjoy; but the principle is not 
changed because there were many reasonings, one made 
by one man and one by another. For from these men, 
taking them collectively, mankind gets permission to have 
these things. Priestley may, in fact, stand as the repre- 
sentative of them, the chairman of the committee, so to 
say, for providing people with good things. 

Around the grave of Priestley an assemblage of scien- 
tists has paid him the respect to which he was entitled 
for the importance of his discovery, besides, a tablet to 
his memory has been set up in one of the churches of 
Philadelphia. 

Thus he is somewhat compensated for the fact that 
when he was a young man he received but one hundred 
and fifty dollars a year for preaching and that he paid 
a quack a hundred dollars to cure him of stammering, 
without avail. He is also somewhat compensated for 



194 REASON 

the fact that, owing to his sympathy with the French 
revolutionists, a mob burned down both his house and 
his church, besides also destroying his papers and appa- 
ratus, this occurring in England previous to his em- 
barkation for America. He is also somewhat compen- 
sated for the fact that he failed, owing to his view of 
the Trinity, to be appointed to accompany Captain Cook 
to the South Seas. 

It is well known that Priestley was a Calvinist and 
believed, therefore, that whatsoever comes to pass has 
been determined to do so beforehand. Reflection on 
this doubtless led him to the view that like causes pro- 
duce like effects. Whatever a given combination of 
materials under the same conditions will produce, they 
will under those conditions any time produce. This, as 
was said, was the principle on which he proceeded. 

ThiSjJn fact, is the same thing as the principle of the 
identity of things, namely, that every ultimate force of 
nature always being the same, existing as it does without 
reference to time, will always produce its one sole effect. 

Inductive reasoning, it should be observed, is, like all 
other reasoning, merely syllogistic, the major premise 
being here the principle that like causes produce like 
effects. 



CHAPTER IX 

SYSTEMATIZATION 

The mind is able not only to discover specific con- 
ceptions of the aspects of things, but is also able to dis- 
cover systems of these conceptions, attaining in this way 
specific classifications. This process of the mind we may 
call systematization. It is not creation, the systems being 
of things as they are. 

The principal kinds of systems which the mind thus 
arrives at, speaking generally, are mathematical, physical, 
biological, and psychological. 

The decimal notation is an instance of the mathe- 
matical kind. We number things by a system of the 
powers of lo. Thus, the first power of lo is lo, the 
second power of lo is lOO, the third power of lo is i,ooo, 
and so on. Moreover, i is the zero power of lo, and the 
reciprocals of the powers of lo are powers indicated by 
negative exponents. Then, how many times a power is 
taken we show by a coefficient. To take an illustration, 
the number three thousand five hundred sixty-one and 
seventy-five hundredths is written 3,561.75, as if it were 
3a^ -f 5a^ -f 6a -f a9 -f- ya~^ + 50""^ (a = 10). We omit 
in practice the literal part, understanding it merely. On 
this plan, it is plain, we can designate in the briefest way 
imaginable any number whatsoever. The mind reached 
a great conception, therefore, when it discovered the 
decimal system, or rather, as we might say, the power 

195 



196 SYSTEMATIZATION 

system, since the principle can be applied no matter what 
the base. 

The mind also attains to a system of vast importance 
when it discovers that calculations depend on finding the 
sum or difference of numbers, and in a simple and easy 
manner. Numbers in the first place are whole or frac- 
tional, and they are like or unlike. The process of find- 
ing the sum of unlike numbers is addition, which we 
perform merely by adding units and carrying tens, not 
having to have a frame with balls on it, as the Chinese 
do. The process of finding the sum of like numbers is 
multiplication, which we perform by multiplying units 
and carrying tens, writing each result in the proper col- 
umn. The process of finding the difference between two 
numbers or what remainder survives when one num- 
ber is taken from another is subtraction, which we per- 
form by subtracting units and carrying tens. The proc- 
ess of finding how many like numbers can be subtracted 
from a given number and what the remainder is is 
division, which we perform by dividing units and carry- 
ing tens. The process of multiplication, when the multi- 
plier is the same as the multiplicand, is involution, and 
the process of division, when the quotient is the same 
number as the divisor, is evolution. Any case whatso- 
ever of finding the sum or difference of whole numbers 
is thus brought under one or the other of these six 
processes, each very simple in itself, a systematization 
hardly to be overestimated. To perform all these opera- 
tions, moreover, we have merely to know the tables up 
to ten. Fractional addition and subtraction are per- 
formed by reduction to a common denominator, and then 
procedure as in the case of whole numbers. Fractional 



SYSTEM ATIZATION 197 

multiplication is performed by multiplying the numera- 
tors for a new numerator, the denominators for a new 
denominator. This process, which includes in itself all 
cases of multiplying fractions, also includes in itself all 
cases of the division of fractions, with this proviso only, 
that the divisor be inverted. If the fractions are ex- 
pressed decimally, the operations, it is plain, are the same 
in all respects as in whole numbers. 

It is related by a man that when he was a boy and 
began to attend school, though he was now eleven years 
old, he was greatly impressed by seeing an older pupil 
write several fractions on the board and after a simple 
process write their exact sum in whole numbers and 
parts thereof, and well he might have been impressed. 
Indeed, the papers of the Egyptians show us that the 
labor was great whereby the human mind so systematized 
conceptions as to be able to accomplish such a feat. 

Series, such as the binomial, the arithmetic, the geo- 
metric, and the logarithmic, also show systematization. 

The binomial series expresses the amount of the sum 
or difference of any two numbers multiplied or divided 
by itself or both, any number of times. All this, how-, 
ever, can be put into the form of a binomial multiplied 
by itself any number of times, since we can use nega- 
tive and fractional exponents as well as positive and 
integral ones. We can also reduce the serial part of the 
expansion to the amount of i plus or minus any num- 
ber, raised to any power. The series will then consist 
of I plus the powers of the number which was added to 
I, from zero upward or from zero downward, and with 
certain coefficients which follow a law. The coefficient 
of the first power of the number is the exponent divided 



198 S YSTEM ATIZ ATION 

by I, the coefficient of the second power is the product 
of the exponent into a number i less than the exponent, 
this product divided by i times 2, the coefficient of the 
third power is the exponent multipHed by a number i 
less than the exponent and by a number 2 less than the 
exponent, this product divided by i times 2 times 3, and 
so on. Here, then, we have a great means of making 
calculation, since in one series, proceeding according to 
laws, we have grasped all the operations of arithmetic. 

An arithmetic series is one in which the terms increase 
or decrease by a common difference. Five points are 
involved, the first term, the last term, the common dif- 
ference, the number of terms, and the sum of all the 
terms, any three of which being known, the others can 
be found on principle, whence the advantage of this 
series. 

A geometric series is one in which the terms differ 
in a constant ratio, the series being increasing if the 
ratio is integral, decreasing if it is fractional, and in- 
volves the five points, any two of which are determined 
by the other three. 

An arithmetic series, moreover, bears a certain rela- 
tion to a geometric one, for if we take the series 10 + 
100-1-1,000+10,000, and so on, we observe that it 
corresponds to the series 14-2 + 34-4, and so on, 
since each term in the second series designates to what 
power 10 must be raised to produce the corresponding 
term in the first series. Now every number may be 
considered as the sum of a geometric series, that is to 
say, as some power of 10 multiplied by i. There is 
corresponding to every number, therefore, another called 
its exponent which shows to what power 10 is to be 



SYSTEM ATIZATION 199 

raised to produce it. Having, then, a table of these ex- 
ponents, called a logarithmic table, we can multiply 
numbers without multiplying them, divide them without 
dividing them, and the like, get at arithmetic results 
through the exponents. What a triumph of the mind 
in systematization ! 

The logarithm of any number depends on a series of 
the powers of a number i less than that number, the 
first power divided by i, the second by 2, and so on, the 
odd terms being plus and the even terms minus. Thus 
from this logarithmic series and its derivatives we can 
find the logarithm of any number whatsoever. 

Another class of mathematical systematization is that 
which has to do with surfaces and solids. Properties 
of the different kinds of polygons and of circles and of 
the different kinds of polyhedrons and of spheres and 
of cylinders and of cones are subject to a system of con- 
ceptions. Take, for example, that simple case that the 
area of any triangle is equal to the product of the base 
into half the altitude. What an importance must attach 
to it! Take also the case that the surface of a globe is 
the same as that of a cylinder with the same diameter. 
Every solid, moreover, has its contents determined by 
the area of some surface or surfaces, and these surfaces 
are in the last resort resolvable into triangles. How 
great, then, must be the importance of the system of 
conceptions under which triangles exist! It is found, 
indeed, that if we know one side of a triangle, we can 
find the other two sides on principle, provided we also 
know two of the angles, or knowing one angle and two 
sides we can find the other side and angles. We come 
thus to have what are called trigonometrical formulae 



200 SYSTEM ATIZATION 

for finding the dimensions of triangles. What is more, 
geometrical figures may be algebraically expressed, geo- 
metrical truths arrived at analytically. 

Physical systematization, as we may call it, is exem- 
plified in what we know of astronomy, geography, and 
geology. 

The sun, moon, and planets have their motions, which 
have been calculated with great precision. We can say 
just at what time the sun will rise a thousand years from 
to-day, what position the moon and the planets will then 
be in. 

Another physical systematization, and one of great 
importance, is that which is geographical. We know the 
system of the diversities of lands on the globe, and how 
each continent, island, peninsula, cape, and isthmus is 
situated with reference to the rest of the world. In the 
same way we know the system of the diversities of 
waters. We know the different countries of the earth, 
their cities, their inhabitants, and their productions. 

We know, moreover, the different strata of the earth 
and what is characteristic of each, the Silurian, Devo- 
nian, and the like. 

We descend with our systematization, however, more 
deeply still into the physical make-up of things. 

First, we have a system of the conceptions according 
to which the movements of bodies take place. For ex- 
ample, a traveler in Saxony, together with his friend, 
coming to a river which he wished to cross, got into a 
small boat which was fastened to a wire by a swivel, 
the wire extending across the river and being fastened 
at either end. The manager of the boat merely struck 
the swivel a light blow, when the boat of itself moved 



SYSTEM ATIZATION 201 

to the other side of the river. The man would not have 
been more surprised if a miracle had taken place, hav- 
ing for the moment forgotten to reflect on the principle 
according to which forces are compounded. For it was 
really the current of the river which drove the boat over, 
as the man's friend explained to him, the principle being 
that of the parallelogram of forces, that on which a ship 
sails. 

Instances also might be given of the laws of falling 
bodies, of the laws of pendulums, and of the laws of 
machines. 

Secondly, we have a system of conceptions according 
to which water acts, hydrostatic systematization, we may 
call it, and a system of conceptions according to which 
air acts. 

Water presses equally in all directions, the principle 
on which any weight however small can lift any v/eight 
however large, the principle of the hydraulic press. 
Water makes bodies immersed in it lighter by the weight 
of water displaced, the principle on which specific gravi- 
ties are determined. Think of the importance of this, 
a means by which a substance can be identified! For 
the specific gravity of anything, say of gold, is the ratio 
of a pound of it to the weight of water of the same size. 
By means of this principle it was that Archimedes could 
divine that a crown which it was claimed was made of 
pure gold really contained alloy. 

We have also a system of conceptions relating to air, 
for example, the air exerts a pressure of several pounds 
to the square inch, or rather a pressure which varies with 
the condition of the air, the principle of the barometer. 

The waves of air creating sounds are subject to a 



202 SYSTEM ATIZATION 

system of conceptions on which depends music. For 
example, we are able to say beforehand that the num- 
ber of vibrations of a tightened string per second varies 
as the square root of the tension. We are able to say 
that musical sounds must conform to certain arithmetic 
ratios, and the like. 

Thirdly, we have systems of conceptions about heat, 
about light, and about electricity. 

Regarding heat, we have it established that the change 
of temperature changes proportionately the size of a 
thing, different substances having different coefhcients of 
expansion, that is to say, each a number to indicate its 
enlargement by heat. Each substance, too, has its boil- 
ing point, that of mercury, for example, being more than 
three times higher than that of water. Moreover, heat 
can be transformed into motion, as we say, so much heat 
producing so much effect. 

Regarding light, we have it established that it is 
reflected and refracted in definite ways, the angle of 
reflection being the same as that of incidence, and the 
angle of refraction being determined by the medium. 
Examples of mirrors we have explained out of the law 
of reflection, examples of lenses out of the law of re- 
fraction. It is found also that the light from a sub- 
stance in flames gives a spectrum, certain lines by which 
the substance can be identified, whether it be compounded 
with other substances or not. 

Regarding electricity, we have it established that posi- 
tive repels positive, but attracts negative, that negative 
repels negative, but attracts positive. The generation 
and effectuality of electricity, moreover, is in accordance 
with mathematical forms. When a cable which was laid 



SYSTEMATIZATION 203 

in the ocean broke, Thomson, it is said, was able, on 
mathematical grounds, to say where in that long stretch 
the breakage had taken place. 

Fourthly, we have systems of conceptions respecting 
the chemical conditions of matter. For each compound 
substance we have a formula expressing how it is con- 
stituted, as, for example, HgO for water. When, indeed, 
we take into consideration the vast number of these 
formulae which we possess, applying with precision to 
all ordinary things, we are made aware what a power 
we have over nature in the comprehension of the sys- 
tem of chemistry. 

The physical systematization which the mind has been 
able to arrive at we find to be a wonderful thing. We 
are possessed of an intricate system of conceptions into 
which nature fits, the net, so to say, into which the uni- 
verse is constructed, to borrow an expression from 
Hegel. It is to be observed, too, that these are not 
mere vague conceptions, but are specific in their char- 
acter. It must be evident, therefore, that the mind of 
man has gained such an advance beyond that of the 
brute as to make comparison between the one and the 
other ludicrous. This is not to say that there is no 
advantage in such a comparison, as indeed there is, but 
it is to say that the mind of man has so far outstripped 
that of the brute that the mind of the brute has no 
chance of ever approaching it. The minds of savages, 
it is also apparent, having made little progress in sys- 
tematization, are so inferior to the minds of many others 
that the comparison between the mind of a savage and 
that of a Gladstone, for example, is ridiculous. The 
minds of clowns, it is also clear, can have little impor- 



204 SYSTEMATIZATION 

tance in comparison with the minds of scientists. That 
the minds of all men can in time be raised up into sys- 
tematization we must indeed hope, but that they are not 
yet raised up into it we must also acknowledge. 

Biological systematization is either botanic or zoolog- 
ical, as it pertains either to plants or to animals. 

The different kinds of vegetable existences in the 
world, which are certainly more than one hundred thou- 
sand, are grouped into a few classes. We have, in the 
first place, a class made up of slime-moulds, bacteria, 
yeast-plants, gutter-plants, and the like, the whole class 
sometimes called protophytes. We have, in the second 
place, a class made up of water-nets, desmids, diatoms, 
and the like, the whole class sometimes called zygospores. 
We have, in the third place, a class made up of sargas- 
sums, rock-weeds, blight-plants, and the like, the whole 
class sometimes called oospores. We have, in the fourth 
place, a class made up of dulses, truffles, morels, mush- 
rooms, rusts, black-knots, ergots, and the like, the whole 
class sometimes called carpospores. We have, in the 
fifth place, a class made up of liverworts and mosses and 
the like, the whole class sometimes called bryophytes. 
We have, in the sixth place, a class made up of horsetails, 
ferns, pepperworts, and the like, the whole class some- 
times called pteridophytes. We have, in the seventh 
place, a class made up of cycads, pines, and welwitschias, 
the whole class sometimes called gymnosperms. We 
have, in the eighth place, what are sometimes called 
angiosperms, a class divided into monocotyledons and 
dicotyledons. 

If, then, we had at hand, as we might easily have, 
bacteria, diatoms, seaweeds, mushrooms, mosses, ferns, 



SYSTEMATIZATION 205 

cedars, palms, and oaks, we should have the whole 
vegetable kingdom assembled, so to say, in our presence, 
such systematization has the mind arrived at relative to 
plants. 

The monocotyledons are found to consist of about fifty 
kinds, of which representatives might be taken, such as 
grasses, lilies, yams, bananas, palms, and so on, all 
of which if we had them assembled would represent to 
us this whole division of angiosperms. 

Under the same kind, or order, as it is called, many 
of the varieties of monocotyledons are small and some 
insignificant, yet almost any kind, it appears, had the 
capability to produce trees. The bamboo, for example, 
is the tree of the grass family. 

The dicotyledons are found to consist of three times 
or more as many kinds as the other division, representa- 
tives of which are oaks, nutmegs, beets, sage, and so on. 
We can say of these also that if we had them all in one 
company they would represent to us all the divisions of 
the angiosperms, by far the most important portion of 
the vegetable kingdom. 

It is furthermore to be taken into account that each 
of these classes of plants is divided into others, and these 
often into still others, so that the divisions finally reached 
are very specific and not mere generalities, as were the 
primitive divisions made by mankind. The mind has 
the vegetable kingdom fast in a net, as it were. 

But not only does the mind have a systematization of 
the whole vegetable kingdom as regards kinds. It also 
has a systematization of the forms which all plants tend 
to take. First, we have the stem, which may become 
runners, rootstocks, tubers, corms, axes, tendrils, and 



206 SYSTEMATIZATION 

thorns. Secondly, we have the leaf, which may become 
bracts, scales, envelopes, stamens, carpels, tendrils, and 
spines. Thirdly, we have the bark, which may become 
hairs, bristles, prickles, scales, glands, and ovules. 
Fourthly, we have the root, which may become what are 
called aerial roots or the so-called suckers of parasites, 
in addition to what we usually call roots. Again, all 
forms of vegetation are resolvable into cells, which them- 
selves are subject to systematization. 

The countless animals of the world fall into a very 
few classes. Indeed, if we had an amoeba, a sponge, a 
polyp, a starfish, a worm, an oyster, a lobster, a fly, and 
a vertebrate, we should possess the whole kingdom. 

The class to which man belongs, by far the most im- 
portant, the vertebrate, itself falls into five classes, fishes, 
amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, the latter 
being of all animals those of chief note!. 

We can readily find about us animals to represent 
half of the mammals or more, opossums, moles, bats, 
cats, rats, oxen, and any of our own species, but we 
should have to go to the ocean for whales and sea-cows, 
to India or Africa for an elephant, to Syria or Arabia 
for a cony, to Australia for a duckbill, and to South 
America for a sloth. If, however, we had in a small 
park, as we might easily have, a duckbill, an opossum, 
a sloth, rats, moles, bats, a whale, a sea-cow, an elephant, 
conies, an ox, cats, and a man or an ape, we should have 
present representatives of the whole class of mammals, 
thirteen in number. 

Each of the classes of animals, however, falls into 
others, which are in the case of some classes still far- 
ther divided, so that the divisions which we have attained 



SYSTEMATIZATION 20/ 

of animals map out their kingdom for us with great pre- 
cision. We have reached specific distinctions. We have 
thus the whole animal kingdom fast in a net of systems, 
an advantage which is hardly to be overrated. 

Moreover, of the higher kinds, any individual animal 
is reducible to certain systems, as the tegumentary, the 
osseous, the muscular, the digestive, the secretory, the 
circulatory, the respiratory, the nervous, and the like. 
Indeed, these systems fall into various forms as they are 
found in this or in that kind of an animal. An animal 
body also reduces to tissues, and these to cells. Indeed, 
every animal body, it is said, has been built up from a 
single cell. 

Psychological systematizations are also attained, gram- 
matical, logical, ethical, sesthetical, and metaphysical. 

Every word belongs to one or the other of a few 
classes. The names of things are found to have certain 
forms for the plural and are in certain cases. There are 
certain distinctions to indicate gender. Adjectives have 
forms of comparison. Verbs have person, number, mood, 
tense, and voice. We have adverbs of time, place, man- 
ner. We have conjunctions, relative and personal pro- 
nouns. We have, in short, a system of grammar. 

We have also a systematization of thought itself, hav- 
ing discovered that we make conclusions in a certain 
form which may be reduced to the syllogism, this being 
made up of judgments, which themselves are constituted 
out of notions. 

Notions are individual or general. This is the pri- 
mary distinction. Proper nouns, for example, denote 
individual existences, but common nouns denote what is 
common to several individuals. The same distinction, 



2o8 SYSTEMATIZATION 

of course, applies to the terms in which notions are 
expressed. 

A systematization has also been made of the ways in 
which one notion may stand to another, what notions 
are consistent with each other, what notions are not, the 
same thing applying to terms. 

Judgments and the propositions standing for them 
are categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive, hypothetical 
propositions usually containing the word if, and disjunc- 
tive ones the words either, or. Judgments and the 
propositions standing for them are affirmative or nega- 
tive, the latter propositions usually containing the word 
not. Judgments and the propositions standing for them 
are universal or particular, universal propositions usu- 
ally containing the word all, particular propositions the 
word some. 

Universal judgments and propositions, if affirmative, 
are designated by the letter A, \{ negative by the letter 
E, while particular judgments and propositions, if af- 
firmative, are designated by the letter /, if negative by 
the letter 0. All the ways, therefore, which the several 
kinds of judgments can stand to one another are exhib- 
ited by certain combinations of these letters. 

Syllogisms are categorical, hypothetical, or disjunc- 
tive, accordingly as the first judgment or proposition in 
them is the one or the other of these kinds, the categori- 
cal, however, being the primary form from which the 
others follow, an example of which is. All men are mor- 
tal, Socrates was a man — Socrates was mortal, which, 
it will be observed, means no more than this, that 
Socrates was mortal because he was human, we attribut- 
ing to Socrates the characteristic mortality because it 



SYSTEM ATIZATION 209 

was a characteristic of that characteristic of him which 
we denominate humanity. The first judgment or propo- 
sition in a syllogism is called the major premise and the 
second the minor, the third being called the conclusion. 

Moreover, as any syllogism can be expressed by some 
arrangement of three of the letters, A, E, I, O, and each 
judgment or proposition in them by some arrangement 
of two of the letters x, y, z, all possible syllogisms are 
easily canvassed and their peculiarities pointed out, it 
being found that only a few of these are valid, the which 
have names, as, for instance, Barbara, for a syllogism 
consisting of three universal affirmative judgments or 
propositions. 

We have likewise a systematization of rules for the 
guidance of our thought. 

As this relates to notions, it is concerned chiefly with 
definitions, that they be clear and precise, or with divi- 
sions, that they be exhaustive and no one of them include 
any of the others. 

Moreover, when a notion or term contains others it 
is said to be the genus, and the notions or terms con- 
tained in it are said to be species, and that which dis- 
tinguishes a species from its genus is called the essential 
difference. 

As a systematization of rules relates to judgments or 
propositions, it is concerned chiefly with what is known 
as conversion, what changes are necessary, so that the 
subject may take the place of the predicate and the 
truth be preserved. 

As a systematization of rules relates to syllogisms, it 
is concerned with methods of testing conclusions, whether 
they be valid or not. It is settled as a general principle 



210 SYSTEM ATIZATION 

that nothing follows from mere negatives or from mere 
particulars, a universal judgment or proposition being 
necessary to a just conclusion, and that if one premise 
be negative or particular, so also must be the conclusion. 
No more can be contained in the conclusion than was 
contained in the premises. Moreover, no syllogism can 
have four judgments or propositions, four notions or 
terms in it. 

Again, it is a rule of procedure in reasoning that 
wherein things alone agree or differ is to be found the 
antecedent of a given consequent. 

Some special methods also are set forth for guidance 
in particular cases. If we assign a reason for a premise, 
we have an epichirema, as, for example, this : " The 
mixture taken was poisonous because it contained strych- 
nine; it was deliberately drunk by the person; he, there- 
fore, committed suicide." If we make one conclusion 
follow upon another in a chain we have a sorites, as, for 
example, what was stated by Frederick Douglass to the 
colored people : " Without wealth there is no leisure, 
without leisure there is no thought, and without thought 
there is no progress." If we prove a worse case than 
the one in question we have an a fortiori, for example, 
" I can't walk^ much more I can't run." If we show 
that the opposite of a proposition is absurd we have a 
reductio ad absurdum. If we show that on either sup- 
position, one or the other of which must be true, a con- 
clusion follows, we have a dilemma, as, for example, 
" With one draught it is impossible to take a draught 
in the double corner of a checker-board, this draught 
being capable of being moved in either of two spaces." 
If our reasoning proceed from antecedents to conse- 



SYSTEMATIZATION 211 

quents it is said to be a priori, if from consequents to 
antecedents, d posteriori. Lastly, certain persistent fal- 
lacies are pointed out, ambiguous middle, begging the 
question, mistaking the point, argumentum ad hominem, 
propter hoc, etc. 

We have, moreover, as everybody knows, what are 
called systems of ethics, the same being divided into 
theoretical and practical. 

The ground of right is said to be in the will of God, 
in the nature of things, or in the end for which we exist, 
these manifestly, however, all coming to the same thing, 
the nature of things exhibiting the will of God and the 
end of our existence being a part of the nature of things. 

Duty falls into a system, being first what one owes 
to God, secondly what he owes to mankind, thirdly what 
he owes to animals. 

Duties to mankind are concerned with health, prop- 
erty, propriety, companionship, and knowledge. For 
these are ends of our being, or at least necessarily in- 
volved in the ends of our being. We are naturally 
obligated, therefore, to respect them not only in our- 
selves, but in others ; for example, we cannot rightfully 
mar the bodily perfection of another, take away his 
property, discourteously treat him, keep from him proper 
social enjoyment, or tell him falsehoods. Lying, for 
instance, is merely depriving one of knowledge to which 
he is entitled. 

The mind also forms aesthetic systematizations, as must 
be evident on a moment's reflection. For all are agreed 
that a beautiful thing is in certain definite respects dis- 
tinguished from an ugly one. They will also point out 
in what these respects consist. Karnes declares that 



212 SYSTEMATIZATION 

artists have in all ages been governed by a taste for sim- 
plicity. Why this should have been so he undertakes to 
say. The mind can know things only under the form 
of unity, which makes it difficult for it to give attention 
to complicated circumstances and crowded ornaments; 
besides, says he, the mind attached to beauties of a high 
rank cannot descend to inferior beauties. He states also 
that regularity is an element of beauty, we being pleased 
with a due proportion of parts in a thing. Purpose he 
mentions as still another element of beauty — anything 
to please us must have some aim, must come to some 
point. Again, he designates a want of variety as being 
disagreeable to us. Now all this and countless other such 
observations are gathered up into the systematization 
that what is beautiful is that which amid variety main- 
tains unity. For illustration, what is regular, that is to 
say, what is symmetrical, is that which has the same 
thing in different parts, is beautiful. Again, what has 
purpose has a unity of details. 

The mind also makes a systematization of the systems 
of truth, such systematization constituting metaphysics, 
which, however, has had to advance gradually, as the sys- 
tems of truth were gotten at better and better. 

Aristotle, more than two thousand years ago, reduced 
all existence to system with the principle of what he 
designated as entelechy, namely, organization which con- 
forms to an idea while ever materially varying. The 
human body, for example, is an entelechy — while no two 
moments the same, it is yet always the same. The whole 
universe is an entelechy — its idea is each moment ex- 
pressed in the flow of events. He was led to his doc- 
trine by the doctrine of Plato, that the indwelling prin- 



SYSTEM ATI2ATI0N 213 

ciple of everything is its idea — everything exists on a 
pattern. For example, every triangle, in that it is a 
triangle, conforms to a type. 

Plato obtained his doctrine from that of Socrates, 
which was to the effect that the universal notion of a 
thing is that in which its essence consists. That in which 
the things of a class are the same is what puts them in 
that class. 

Plotinus, on the basis of Aristotle's systematization of 
the universe, arrived at the notion of its unity, the sys- 
tem of the truth of things is the expression of one power, 
he therefore, to this extent, enhanced the previous sys- 
tematization. 

Athanasius improved this in that he founded what is 
known as trinitarianism, taking the word here in a philo- 
sophical, not in a popular sense, seeing that he pointed 
out how the system of the truth of things, called by him 
the Logos, is one with the unity of the world, as well 
as with the systematization of things in men's minds. 
The Father is the one primeval power, the Son is the 
system of the truth of things, the Spirit is the guide of 
men to the truth, and yet these three are one and the 
same. 

The question having been forced on the minds of men 
what the universal essence in any case is, it was deter- 
mined that it must be certain aspects of individual 
things, not a generality existing outside them merely. 
There is a sense, therefore, in which the one power of 
the universe is immanent in things. 

Descartes, then, reached the doctrine that the whole 
system of the truth of things is that of matter and that 
of mind, absolute certitude about them being guaranteed 



214 SYSTEMATIZATION 

by the nature of mind itself, which cannot doubt that 
it, doubting, doubts — it knows something for certain. 
Whatsoever else it knows with equal certainty, it cer- 
tainly knows. 

The question, however, necessarily arose, How are 
mind and matter related to each other? Those who 
showed a connection of mind and matter on general prin- 
ciples were Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz — hence 
called rationalists. Those who showed the same con- 
nection from experience were Locke, Berkeley, and 
Hume — hence called empiricists. Those who showed the 
connection rationally and empirically at the same time 
were Kant, Herbart, and Lotze — hence called respec- 
tively transcendentalist, realistic individualist, and ideal 
realist. 

Granting, however, the connection of mind and mat- 
ter on general principles as well as from experience, the 
question still remained. How are mind and matter re- 
lated to living organisms? We have, therefore, the 
systematization effected by Spencer, which is no doubt 
to be followed by others more specifically setting forth 
the systematization of all things. 

It is plain also that we could go back of Socrates and 
enumerate the steps in the systematization of our total 
knowledge of things which were successively taken, from 
the mythological notion of things up to Socrates's 
philosophy. 



CHAPTER X 

INVENTION 

The term invention may be used to designate the com- 
bination which the mind makes of primitive conceptions, 
so that together they form a new conception reahzable 
in the world. We are, indeed, able to design things dif- 
ferent from those we have before known to exist, but 
not able to design the parts of which they are ultimately 
composed. 

This applies to every realm of existence, inorganic, 
organic, mental; whence in general we may say that in- 
ventions are mechanical, chemical, biological, institu- 
tional, and artistic. Such a division, at least, is sufficient 
for what we have to consider. 

Mechanical invention is exemplified, for one way, in 
the construction of buildings. The stones of which these 
are made — if, indeed, they be built of stone — have existed 
for millions of years. Our conceptions of the stones, 
therefore, are primitive ones. Nevertheless, we do shape 
the stones, that is to say, we combine the conception of 
a stone with certain geometrical conceptions, these, too, 
going back to primitive ones. We also put the stones in 
certain positions, adding here again other conceptions. 
If we use mortar, we add still another conception, and a 
compound one at that, mortar itself being the result of 
the combination of several conceptions. The woodwork 
and metalwork likewise each exhibit the forms of various 

215 



2l6 INVENTION 

combined conceptions. The glass, furthermore, is the 
result of much transformation — a number of conceptions 
have been united, enabling us to manufacture and shape 
it. The building, finally, stands forth in the form of a 
thought, which itself consists of a great many primitive 
thoughts. The process by which this thought was ob- 
tained we call invention. 

This process is not imaginary in the sense that it 
departs from reality. The primitive conceptions of which 
the compound conception is made up are forms of what 
has existence in nature, and they are combined on the 
basis of possibility. The compound conception, whether 
it is realized or not, at least can be realized. Suppose, 
for example, that the Coliseum at Rome had never been 
built, it would nevertheless have been possible to build it. 

Once neither Solomon's Temple nor any prototype of 
it existed on this earth. Its construction had to be 
thought out, and on the ground of reality. Doubtless it 
was partly modelled after former structures, but these 
structures themselves were once non-existent. Going 
back to the elements of edifices, we find that the concep- 
tions of edifices are merely embodiments of primary 
conceptions that are discovered in nature. The creative 
process consists in combining these conceptions. Some- 
times a compound conception which should form part of 
the total was obtained on theory merely, sometimes an 
experiment was necessary. In all cases there was a com- 
bination of conceptions which stood for natural realities. 

The temple of Solomon was destroyed more than 
twenty-four hundred years ago, but an account of it has 
descended to us so that we should be able in part to 
restore it. Indeed, its perfect restoration is in itself 



INVENTION 217 

conceivable. For if we had the minute specifications of 
the temple which we may suppose the architect himself 
to have possessed, one of our own builders could repro- 
duce the temple with such exactness that those who be- 
held the original temple, should they suddenly rise from 
the dead, would not be able to detect any difference 
whatsoever between this temple and that which Solomon 
dedicated. Should Solomon himself appear on the scene 
he would not know the temple we had made from the 
one which he caused to be built. 

Roads for wagons depend on compound conception, 
and are, therefore, due to invention. 

Sherman's army, moving northward from Savannah 
through the Carolinas, had to pass over moist ground. 
To keep the wagons from sinking into the mud, rails 
were taken from fences and laid down crosswise, one 
after the other. Over these the wagons were readily 
hauled, the rails being pressed into the earth, forming 
a hard bed. These rails of fences were here combined 
with the ground to make what we call a road, one primi- 
tive conception with one compound one. For rails them- 
selves are an invention. Long before the Civil War, 
farmers along the road which Sherman was destined to 
take had chopped down trees, cut them into certain 
lengths, and then split the logs with beetle and wedges, 
little thinking, perhaps, that they were working for 
Sherman. The trees were in the form of a primitive 
conception. Cutting and splitting were other primitive 
conceptions that were added to them to make the con- 
ception of rails. 

The Appian Way, a Roman thoroughfare, was begun 
more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ. 



21 8 INVENTION 

It finally extended from Rome to Brundusium. It was 
paved with blocks of stone cut in polygonal shapes, and 
on either side was a stone balustrade. The whole road 
was about eighteen feet wide. 

The Romans filled up depressions and levelled eleva- 
tions, bridged streams, and tunnelled mountains. To 
build their roads they had to combine many primitive 
conceptions into compound ones. Their bridges are still 
in existence, and seem likely to be the means by which 
even those who shall live in the days of the millennium 
shall pass to and fro over many a stream. One of their 
tunnels is to-day observed in the vicinity of Naples, hav- 
ing arches at the end, the stones of which were laid by 
hands long since ceased from their activity. The Ro- 
mans at times used gravel to harden their roadbeds, the 
same as we do ourselves at this day, combining here two 
primitive conceptions into a new one. 

We ourselves, however, have extended invention much 
farther than the Romans. We have combined the con- 
ception of a Roman road with the conception of iron. 
To save expense, we hit on the device of having the road 
only for the wheels of the vehicles,. neglecting the middle 
and sides. On the roadbed we placed ties, and on these 
the rails. Here we have a handsome generalization. 

It is possible to generalize still farther. A road may 
consist of merely a band in sections, these sections form- 
ing an endless band not many times greater in diameter 
than the wheel, a section to drop down in front of the 
wheel at the same time that one behind it shall rise up. 
This principle has probably never been applied on a large 
scale, though it is manifestly capable of being so applied, 
the advantage, moreover, being that the railroad would 



INVENTION 219 

be so cheap and could be made to extend in any direc- 
tion and to any length at pleasure. The vehicle could 
go anywhere. 

Machinery is the most common illustration of mechan- 
ical invention, the saw-mill, for example. Blocks of 
wood or pieces of iron, forming part of a framework, 
were so placed as to hold an upright saw in position, 
and yet at the same time to allow the saw to move up 
or down a certain distance. Then the crank of a shaft 
was fastened to one of the handles of the saw, so that 
when the shaft revolved the saw would rise and fall, 
the shaft being turned by a water-wheel either directly 
or by means of a belt or by an arm. The log lay on a 
frame which was moved so as gradually to press the log 
against the saw. Thus boards and timbers were cut out. 
Here several compound conceptions were united to pro- 
duce the desired result — that of the saw, that of the 
water-wheel, that of the carriage, that of the frame. 
Analyzing these, we should of course get back to the 
primitive conceptions. 

Simple as this invention seems to us it was undoubt- 
edly not an early one, men having had to do a great 
deal of thinking to produce it. It is recorded that in 
the year 1338 there was living at Augsburg, Germany, 
a man by the name of Sawmiller, whence it is inferred 
that saw-mills must have been in existence before that 
time, or whence should the man have derived his name? 
It seems, however, that logs were once sawed by two 
men, one of whom stood on the log and the other below 
the log in a pit. A place in which sawing of this kind 
was done might have been called a saw-mill. There is 
on record, however, a description of a saw-mill which 



220 INVENTION 

was observed by the writer of the account about the 
middle of the sixteenth century, and there are indica- 
tions that saw-mills were in existence a hundred years 
earlier. 

Sewing-machines, moreover, are a mechanical inven- 
tion. The needle is forced through the cloth by an arm 
which vibrates, and a shuttle passes a thread through the 
loop on the under side. The tension exerted on the 
thread draws it up tightly, so that a neat seam is stitched. 
If, then, we take one of our sewing-machines and ana- 
lyze it into its primitive conceptions we shall find that 
the machine is the result of a compounding of primitive 
conceptions that are forms of things existing in nature 
and subject to everybody's observation. 

Chemical invention was usually later than mechanical 
invention, being more difficult to arrive at. The pro- 
duction of steel is an example of it. 

Primitive men, doubtless, did not melt iron ore, they 
merely heated certain kinds of iron which they found 
and pounded the iron into shape. Heating it with wood, 
which was in contact with it, they happened to make 
use of carbon, which is necessary to the reduction of 
iron ore. What is called cast-iron was subsequently 
made, the iron ore being melted in some kind of a blast- 
furnace, certain chemical changes being thereby effected 
in the ores. Wrought-iron came to be made out of cast- 
iron by getting rid of most of the carbon which is found 
in cast-iron, getting rid also, at the same time, of the 
phosphorus and silicon. Practice has shown, however, 
that an intermediate grade, having not so much carbon 
as cast-iron nor so little as wrought-iron, is best suited 
to commercial purposes, taking things as they are. 



INVENTION 221 

One of the main conditions on which the production 
of commercial steel depends is due to the invention of 
Bessemer — from whom, therefore, this steel takes its 
name — the blowing of air into melted cast-iron. The 
oxygen of the air combines chemically with the iron, or 
oxidizes it. This has the result to take the carbon out 
of the iron, much the same as oxygen combining with 
wood has the effect to take the wood out of a stove. 
The carbon being out of the cast-iron, then, by adding 
other cast-iron, carbon can be reintroduced to the desired 
quantity to make out of the mass what is now called 
Bessemer steel. It should be noted, however that a 
very important improvement was made in that the vessel 
which holds the molten mass, technically called a con- 
verter, is lined with limestone, this having the effect to 
take the phosphorus out of the iron, if the iron chances 
to contain this substance, the phosphorus uniting with 
the lime. 

Steel has thus become a very important thing. Not 
only are railroads made of it, but the frames of houses, 
to say nothing about the other countless uses of it. 

Materials for building, it would seem, are now nearly 
perfect. Any form of frame whatever can be made out 
of steel, and the frame can be filled with brick, or even 
with cement. Thus any form of house is easily con- 
structed out of fluid, or, at least, out of mushy materials. 
We have descended to the very elements of building, 
as it were, and can mould them to our will. Out of these 
materials, moreover, structures can be built which are 
practically eternal. Could it be settled what we want, 
then we could build once for all. Houses would last 
not merely hundreds, nor even thousands, but millions 



222 INVENTION 

of years. What result this would have on the cheapen- 
ing of living is easily computed. 

Explosives are an instance of chemical invention, gun- 
powder among them. Gunpowder is made by mixing 
sulphur and charcoal together in not quite equal quan- 
tities, and combining this mixture with about three times 
as much saltpetre. When fire is brought in contact with 
gunpowder a chemical change takes place, creating gases, 
the expansive force of which makes the explosion. For 
the gases must occupy about two hundred and eighty 
times as much space as the original powder occupied, 
and, what is more, they must occupy it in a hurry. 

Gunpowder seems to have been known to the Chinese 
possibly thousands of years before our era. How, then, 
could they have discovered it? The answer has been 
that there are in China great plains on which saltpetre 
exists, and fires being kindled there would produce car- 
bon, which becoming combined with the saltpetre would 
cause an explosion. The use of sulphur, it is believed, 
was an after-thought. 

The great effect which gunpowder has had on warfare, 
indeed, entitles it to rank as one of the most important 
inventions ever effected. Barbarians are no longer able 
to overrun civilized peoples. What is more, valor counts 
for little. Thought alone is what can be of any avail 
in war. Furthermore, wars are rendered very expen- 
sive, and therefore are not likely to be undertaken if they 
can be avoided. All these results are due to the inven- 
tion of gunpowder, a chemical invention which consisted 
in combining the conception of carbon and the concep- 
tion of sulphur with the conception of saltpetre. 

Dynamite is an explosive which depends on nitro- 



INVENTION 223 

glycerine, the which is made of glycerine and acids, 
nitric and sulphuric, a late invention due to Sobrero. It 
is this mixed with some other thing, brick-dust, for ex- 
ample, which is called dynamite. It was found too dan- 
gerous to use the nitro-glycerine without so mixing it. 

Dynamite is exploded by a shock, and, therefore, is 
very important as a means of blasting, having three or 
four times the force of gunpowder. The Hoosac Tun- 
nel, which is about five miles in length, was blasted out 
with it, seventy tons being used for that purpose. It 
was transported in tin cans in a frozen state, and the 
cans were coated with paraffine. The bottoms of the 
boxes in which the cans were packed were covered with 
sponges, and rubber was wound around the outside of 
the boxes. 

The amount of labor which can be saved by the use 
of an explosive like nitro-glycerine is what would once 
have been deemed incredible. All this saving is due to 
the chemical invention of Sobrero. Indeed, if he were 
paid for all the work which his invention has saved he 
would have money enough to buy out some States. 

Biological invention is shown when conceptions are so 
combined as to affect plants or animals, and rises, there- 
fore, above both mechanical and chemical invention. 

The grass family of plants contains between four and 
five hundred species, and among them is wheat, the seeds 
of which constitute the most important food of mankind. 

An experiment was made of taking a certain wild 
grass, planting its seeds, cultivating the shoots, and, 
when they themselves produced seed, selecting the best 
of it to sow next year. This process having been con- 
tinued for twelve years, the seeds were so much improved 



224 INVENTION 

as veritably to be wheat itself. It is argued, therefore, 
and with plausibility, that wheat was in the early ages 
of the world gotten in such a way. To produce it, the 
wild seeds were combined with good soil, and perhaps 
with moisture. The best of the seeds, moreover, were 
each time sown. Here, indeed, we have a combination 
of primitive biological conceptions into a new whole. 

There are three plants derived from America which 
have gained great prominence in the commercial world, 
maize, potatoes, and tobacco, all of which probably came 
to perfection through biological invention. 

Kernels of maize have been found in the tombs of the 
Incas of Peru, greatly differing from any now grown. 
Indeed, it is probable that all the kinds of maize which 
we possess are descended from some wild variety, in 
every way inferior to the maize which we possess. 
Whether the primitive maize was red, and whether the 
kernels were each separately enclosed in husks, are points 
to be raised. Red ears of corn are found in all varieties, 
even in the white, and kernels have been discovered in- 
dividually encased with husk. The question is, are red 
ears and sheathed kernels reversions? 

The potato belongs to the nightshade family, a family 
containing more than twelve hundred species, the most 
of which are poisonous. How mankind came to eat the 
potato, then, may seem a mystery, a mystery, however, 
easily resolved if we take into account how hard people 
were pressed for food. Savages observed what animals 
ate, and were often in this way enabled to make a selec- 
tion; moreover, hurtful things were often learned from 
trial, thus in course of time savages came to distinguish 
what might be eaten and what might not. Men com- 



INVENTION 225 

bined potato-seed with good soil, with watering, with 
weeding. They also planted each year the best seed. 
They produced in this way, we may suppose, the potatoes 
from which our varieties have sprung. Speaking psy- 
chologically, men combined primitive biological concep- 
tions into a new whole, the doing of which we have to 
thank for our potatoes. 

Tobacco, likewise, belongs to the nightshade family. 
Columbus, soon after his discovery of Cuba, was in- 
formed by an exploring party that they had seen men 
smoking it, the first instance, so far as we know, which 
came under the observation of Europeans. All the smok- 
ing of tobacco among white peoples has resulted from 
the practice of smoking it observed among the so-called 
American Indians, a momentous consequence. The 
aborigines chewed and snuffed as well as smoked it. 
Indeed, we may suppose that chewing preceded smok- 
ing. Trying herbs for food, savages tried tobacco among 
the rest. It was found that the chewing of it produced 
certain agreeable results. The plant was accordingly 
cultivated and improved. 

Strenuous efforts were made to suppress the use of 
tobacco among Europeans, even the death penalty being 
invoked to this end, but without avail. For the use of 
tobacco continued to increase. 

Some time ago it was computed that more than seven 
hundred thousand acres of land were, in the United 
States alone, given up to the culture of tobacco, that 
more than half a billion of pounds were produced annu- 
ally, and that the crop was sold for more than forty 
millions of dollars. Now all this great result has come 
about from the fact that savages, when hungry, once 



226 INVENTION 

upon a time chewed certain weeds, and were consequently 
led to cultivate them. 

As with grains and vegetables, so with fruits, the 
trees producing them have descended from wild ones, 
these having been improved upon by selection. More- 
over, it is known that any variety, say that of pippins, 
can be grown on any kind of an apple-tree by grafting 
it. Take, for example, the sourest kind of apple imag- 
inable, small and shrivelled, into the kind of tree which 
produces it, when a shrub, insert small and short pieces 
of twigs of pippins. The limbs growing out from these 
pieces inserted will themselves bear pippins. This is a 
splendid example of biological invention. The primitive 
sour-apple conception is combined with the pippin-apple 
conception to produce a new conception, that of pippin 
apples grown on a sour-apple tree. Of course, the in- 
vention has to be realistic, not imaginary merely, else 
the boy who grafted an apple into a locust would have 
been successful. 

Cats, dogs, horses, cows, sheep, and pigs no doubt 
show marks of biological invention. 

Our cats descended, it is supposed, from some species 
of wild cat. Under domestication many varieties have 
been produced, some that will howl, others which will 
not, some that are white, and some that are black; even 
red cats, it is said, are known to exist. 

The kinds of dogs are almost innumerable, but it is 
plain that each kind cannot be descended from an orig- 
inal stock, no such stock existing, or ever having existed. 
The kinds of dogs have been developed through bio- 
logical invention. 

It is said that nearly every trotting horse of merit in 



INVENTION 227 

America is descended from a horse imported from Eng- 
land in 1788, called Messenger, and that he himself 
came of a horse called Mambrino. Rysdyk's Hamble- 
tonian, from which so many trotting horses in America 
have sprung, was a descendant of Messenger and was 
valued at one hundred thousand dollars. The Goldsmith 
Maid descended from him left the turf at the age of 
twenty-one with earnings of two hundred thousand dol- 
lars. We have here a fine illustration how a stock is 
improved by selection and the transmission of charac- 
teristics. It is believed that the horse in general was 
evolved from a wild horse, which has long since per- 
ished from the sight of men, and was evolved by breeding 
from the best horses. No primitive wild horses possibly 
now exist, the so-called wild ones being descendants of 
escaped or abandoned tame ones. 

Cattle are found in Africa with horns thirteen feet 
long, while, as we know, certain cattle among us have 
no horns at all. It is evident, also, that from horned 
cattle, horned cattle descend, from hornless cattle, horn- 
less cattle. Indeed, the tendency to have large or small 
horns may be developed on the principle of selection. 
Breeds of butter or of cheese cows, moreover, exist 
which command very high prices, breeds which have been 
developed in a very short time. That all our cattle were 
gotten from certain wild ones no longer extant is easily 
conceivable. 

Sheep of many varieties exist, one, for instance, which 
has such large, fat tails that it is found necessary for 
each sheep to have a cart on which to carry its tail 
around. That, however, such sheep have been developed 
through selection and heredity is apparent, since if these 



228 INVENTION 

sheep are taken to other countries and put under other 
conditions their descendants come to have smaller tails. 

All the kinds of pigs in the world can, according to 
the claim of certain naturalists, be traced back to two 
varieties, the wild boars and the Chinese kind. Those 
descended from the two species combined show, even in 
the first generation, it is said, modifications of the skull 
due to inheritance from the Chinese stock. In the ruins 
of Pompeii was found the skull of a pig which in appear- 
ance greatly resembled that of the breed still kept in the 
vicinity. Essex pigs, it is said, owe their excellent 
qualities to inheritance from the same variety, that is to 
say, from Neapolitan pigs. 

Our fowls arose in the same way. It is plain that 
they have not existed on this earth in their present form 
from all antiquity. The Chinese have records of their 
introduction into their country. Fowls are not men- 
tioned by the older Jewish or Egyptian writers, and are 
not spoken of by Homer. They seem, however, to have 
existed in India something like eight hundred or a thou- 
sand years before our era. We may suppose that they 
had been developed from wild fowl. 

Institutional invention has always been considered as 
being of a high order. Illustrating it we may instance 
courts, armies, and schools, none of which things exist 
by nature, but have been created by man on the principle 
of compounding conceptions. 

Among savage peoples some means of insuring jus- 
tice indeed exist, and often these means may be adequate, 
but it is to be remembered that savages have to deal with 
sparse populations only, and with interests little diversi- 
fied. Civilized people, on the contrary, were compelled 



INVENTION 229 

to have some permanent and systematic way of satisfy- 
ing the demand for justice, whence the invention of 
courts. There had to be a tribunal which should pass 
on cases, a fixed manner of getting cases before this 
tribunal, and a method of trial. The tribunal was made 
to consist of judges, latterly of a judge and jurors. The 
judges were men set apart to do nothing else but to 
pass on matters presented to them, men who thus came 
to have precedents on which to decide. To guard 
against possible mistakes or prejudices on the part of 
the judges, one not satisfied with a decision in a lower 
court might appeal to a higher. Certain forms were pre- 
scribed for getting a case before a court, now technically 
known as pleadings, the outcome of which was that the 
point was reached wherein one party affirmed just what 
the other party denied, whence the necessity of the trial 
of the case. The point in controversy might be either 
what the law was or what the fact was, and the one or 
the other of these might be hard to determine. First, 
it would be a part of the system of justice that declara- 
tions should be made by the nation or its rulers as to 
what the laws were, certain written statements of them. 
Secondly, however, as these laws could only exist in a 
general form, each particular case would have to be 
passed on as to whether it came under the rule or not. 
The judge or judges would have to decide the point, 
but not till he or they had heard the arguments on both 
sides. The question of fact would be still harder to 
settle. Evidence would have to be furnished, and this 
in general would be either documentary or oral, whence 
the multitudinous rules which would come to exist re- 
garding the admissibility of testimony. It having been 



230 INVENTION 

determined what in the particular case was evidence and 
what was not, the judge giving decisions on the points 
as they arose, the next thing to dispose of would be 
what was the weight of the evidence. Both parties 
would have somewhat to support the contention which 
it set up, the question was, whose evidence preponder- 
ated? often a most perplexing one, a matter which with 
us, as we know, is left to the jury. When a case was 
finally decided it would in general relate to one or the 
other of two things, either to the person or to his prop- 
erty. Some punishment was or was not to be inflicted 
upon the person, some property was or was not to pass 
from one person to another. There had accordingly to 
be some way of carrying the findings of the court out. 
Certain forms were to be gone through with, after which 
it was the duty of certain officers to punish the person 
or to take away his property. The institution of courts, 
indeed, consisted in compounding a conception out of 
other conceptions, those conceptions in the last resort 
going back to primitive ones, inalienable rights. 

The creation of armies gave great power to nations, 
for the reason that an organized and permanent force 
is greatly superior to a disorganized and temporary one. 
Men were set apart for soldiers, trained for the work. 
They were divided into small bands, over which was an 
officer whose orders the soldiers must unhesitatingly 
obey. A number of these bands were under the direc- 
tion of a higher officer, whom the commanders of the 
bands were to obey. Thus a larger band was formed. 
Bands of this size were combined into larger ones on 
the same plan, and these into still larger ones, and so 
on, till finally the whole constituted an army which was 



INVENTION 231 

under the command of a single person. Whatever he 
said had to be done. The soldiers were each armed with 
some kind of weapon or weapons, some cutting instru- 
ment or some missile. In close contact they used spears 
and swords, being at a distance they threw stones or 
shot arrows. Latterly, of course, firearms came into use, 
but the principle was the same. Anybody who thought 
to interfere with the existing order, as it is usual to call 
it, could easily be put out of the way by one or more 
of the soldiers acting under the orders of superiors. If 
he assembled a band of persons like minded as himself, 
enough of these soldiers could likewise overcome them, 
being always ready to act at a moment's notice. It would 
necessarily come about, therefore, that only armies, and 
those of considerable size, could combat the regime of 
any particular people, the result being that men obtained 
fixed ways of doing things and worked them out to per- 
fection. Except in time of war, order prevailed. 

The institution of armies, then, it will appear, was a 
case of compounding conceptions, as was said. For 
everything pertaining to an army exists independent of 
it. An army is created by effecting a systematic com- 
bination of various things and carrying on the use of it 
systematically. 

The institution of the army, doubtless, had its greatest 
effect on the world in the hands of the Romans. Their 
armies were so organized as to be practically invincible, 
and the management of them was so systematized that 
the republic on the banks of the Tiber extended its do- 
minions so far as still to have been the greatest republic 
which the world has ever seen. Rome completed its 
principal conquests more than one hundred and thirty 



232 INVENTION 

years' before the Christian era, and it was not till two 
hundred and eighty-four years after that era that Dio- 
cletian began that change of constitution which led to 
the institution of the empire whose seat was Constan- 
tinople. Rome, therefore, as an imperial and world- 
dominating republic may be said to have lasted about 
four hundred years, the ordinary division into republic 
and empire being a misleading one. The Roman idea 
was that the emperors were magistrates of the country, 
sort of prime ministers, not that they were sovereigns. 
The effect which Rome produced on mankind in this 
four hundred years with its military administration was 
one which could never be undone. The social mind was 
given a certain discipline which was destined to influ- 
ence its whole subsequent career. 

Another institutional invention is the school, an or- 
ganized means of forcing ideas into the heads of men 
to become there dominant. Persons known as teachers 
are set apart to take charge of the pupils. The pupil 
passes after a time from a lower to a higher grade. All 
the grade teachers are under the direction of a superin- 
tendent and have some system on which to proceed. The 
pupil is taught at first certain rudiments, both of litera- 
ture and of science, that is to say, letters and numbers. 
He must learn how to read and write and how to calcu- 
late. The principle employed is to give little at a time 
and to reiterate it, the result being that the pupil comes 
to be able to read at sight some very simple sentences 
wherever he may see them, or even anything similar to 
them, and to make some very simple calculations, as, for 
instance, that if Alfred has two marbles and John has 
three, both together they have five. The pupil recites 



INVENTION 233 

daily, or perhaps more than once each day, on the same 
or similar matter. Some methodical plan also underlies 
the work; for instance, a certain vocabulary is made the 
end in the teaching of reading, and certain elementary 
combinations of numbers in the teaching of calculation. 
When the pupil has this vocabulary and these combina- 
tions at command, he has finished the grade. Thus the 
pupil passes from grade to grade, till finally he has mas- 
tered the vocabulary used in common life and can per- 
form the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplica- 
tion, and division. He now reaches the point at which 
he enters on the study of the grammar of the language 
and on the study of arithmetic, takes also geography 
and the like, comes in this way to be prepared to enter 
on the study of pieces of literature and of some of the 
sciences, as algebra, geometry, physics, biology, psychol- 
ogy. From the lower schools he passes to higher ones, 
where literature and science are studied with much 
thoroughness, and finally, perhaps, specializes on some 
branch. It is these higher schools which are of chief 
importance, so far as the welfare and progress of man- 
kind are concerned, the lower schools, however, being 
necessary to enable one to rise to them. The higher ones 
proceed on the same principles as other schools — they 
have system, they make matters impressiye, they take a 
little at a time, they review. 

Not till our times, indeed, was this institution brought 
to anything like perfection, its invention having required 
much thought, though, as is evident, the conception of 
it is merely compounded out of simple conceptions. 

It is evident that the effect of schools on mankind 
must in time produce the greatest of changes. Ideas 



234 INVENTION 

desirable to be had and to be put into practice will have 
been drummed into the heads of men so effectively that 
men can never be gotten away from them. Mankind, so 
to say, will be hypnotized to good ends, the character 
of the inhabitants of the globe will have been changed. 

Lastly, artistic invention is illustrated in architecture, 
together with its accessories : sculpture and painting, in 
musical composition, and in literary productions. 

The Egyptian temples, for example, though erected so 
long ago, display great inventive faculty, for instance, 
that of Luxor by the Nile. The approach to that end 
of it which we may call the front, not along the river, 
was a way on either side of which were sphinxes. At 
the termination of the rows of sphinxes, and as one 
came to the temple, were two obelisks, one on either 
side, much the same as those which can now be seen in 
our cemeteries, they having been copied from the Egyp- 
tian ones. Near the entrance were large statues of 
Rameses the Great. Masts on either side also supported 
colored streamers. The front of the temple had on it 
sculptures in relief representing scenes from the battles 
of Rameses the Great, beneath which was inscribed Pen- 
taur's epic of the battle of Kadesh. Entering through 
the front of the temple the visitor went into a court, 
around which were two rows of columns, on top of them 
a roofing, but over the court itself none. In other words, 
around the court was a colonnade. Going out of this court 
at the opposite end the visitor came into a great hall, 
the roof of which was supported by giant columns, the 
sun streaming through openings near the top, a sort of 
stone-lattice work. He now passed out into a second 
court surrounded by a colonnade, but not as large as 



INVENTION 235 

the first one. From this he got into a vestibule which 
was filled with columns, and from this into either of the 
two small chapels, one on each side. From the vestibule 
he proceeded to more rooms, in the midst of which was 
the sanctuary. It is to be kept in mind, too, that the 
walls were well decorated. Furthermore, when one en- 
tered the covered portion of the temple, called the 
hypostyle, he passed into twilight, and when he entered 
the sanctuary he found it half dark. Thus was produced 
an artistic effect. 

This whole temple, however, was but an adjunct of 
the temple of Karnak, the grandest structure, it is said, 
ever erected by the hand of man. The hypostyle of 
Karnak contains great pillars, some of them nearly sev- 
enty feet high and twelve feet in diameter, so arranged 
that in whatever direction one looks they seem to be 
without end, somewhat as the trees in a forest. 

We have, then, in this artistic creation, taken as a 
whole, a great piece of invention, though, to be sure, no 
one man designed the whole, since it was building 
through successive generations, yet of course it shows 
in itself a great compound conception fabricated by the 
inventive faculty out of primitive conceptions. The 
effects which it produced as a whole were due to artistic 
contrivance. 

Music is another thing which gives scope for the 
exercise of invention. 

Musical compositions were made by the Egyptians 
thousands of years ago, and the other peoples of an- 
tiquity produced them, but the great musical composi- 
tions have been the work of modern times. 

Music expresses human sentiments indefinitely, so that 



236 INVENTION 

the music may mean something to one person which it 
does not to another, something to one age which it does 
not to the next. 

Handel's " Messiah," a musical epic, has been consid- 
ered the best oratorio ever wrought out in the brain of 
man, the manuscript of which in the hand of the com- 
poser is still to be seen in Buckingham Palace. It should 
be observed that this is a composition requiring an even- 
ing for its performance and employing a great number 
and various kinds of musicians. At one performance 
there were twenty-seven hundred voices in the chorus. 
No other musical work, it is said, has enjoyed so great 
and so protracted popularity. Its Hallelujah choruses 
are the delight and wonder of mankind. Handel him- 
self took part in its performance but eight days before 
his death, and it may be considered as his valedictory. 
One hundred years after his birth, to a day, the house 
in which he was born in Halle, Prussia, had placed on 
it in evergreen the names of his celebrated oratorios, the 
word, Messiah, appearing among the rest. Out of the 
primitive conceptions into which musical sounds can be 
resolved he constructed this compound conception. 

Literary invention furnishes still another example of 
artistic creation, the " Hamlet " of Shakespeare, for 
instance. 

In real life people come together, converse with one 
another, and perform while in company certain actions, 
the whole affair being known as a scene. The persons, 
it is plain, talk and act in accordance with their char- 
acters, each as to what the same is. One scene, it is 
plain, too, leads on to another and somewhat influences 
it. All this, indeed, we observe in every-day life. 



INVENTION ' 237 

The dramatic poet takes this conception, but changes 
it in points. He selects his men and women, those who 
have, this or that one, a character which he assigns 
him or her. He selects, also, the situations in which 
they are placed. He works out a plot through their 
conversations and actions. 

It may be that no person just the same as he brings 
on the stage ever really existed or will exist, yet the 
several traits in them are well known by us in men and 
women whom we have seen or at least have heard about. 
The dramatic poet is not therefore depicting impossibili- 
ties nor even improbabilities. He is only describing what 
actually exists or may exist. His characterization and 
the action which it begets are not imaginary in the sense 
that a square circle is. 

Everybody in whose case there is a tragedy of thought 
has a resemblance to Hamlet, but Hamlet is a generic 
character that contains much besides what we might find 
in this particular person. 

Children's play is in some sort a dramatization. For 
they go on hours with a fiction, inventing it as they 
proceed. One is a banker, another a farmer, a third a 
merchant, and so on. They call bits of paper money, 
sticks horses, and sand sugar. The representation which 
they carry on in their minds is of what is possible, it 
may be of what somewhere exists, but it is not repre- 
sentative of what is at hand. 



CHAPTER XI 

VOLITION 

What is peculiar of the will is that a notion, called 
by us a plan, existing in the mind as an idea, takes on, 
through the body, material shape, the plan of the tailor, 
for example, becoming a coat, the plan of the builder a 
house, the plan of the sculptor a statue, the plan of the 
painter a picture, the plan of the singer a song, and the 
plan of the speaker a speech. What, in short, we do 
with any organ of the body, what with any member 
thereof, the hand, for example, is an act of will. 

We sometimes, it is true, use the word will to mean 
the wish merely to execute something, but what is now 
to be said shall be of will in the proper sense of the 
term, the power which the mind has to embody its no- 
tions in material shape. 

The body is a machine of the mind, formed in such 
a manner that, as soon as the mind decides that a plan 
is to be carried into effect, forthwith the body performs 
the necessary movements to that end. Be the plan to 
walk, the feet begin to step; be the plan to toil, the 
hands begin to act; be the plan to speak, the lips begin 
to move. All the mind has to do is to have the plan 
uppermost, the body does the rest. 

Motors of various kinds exist — those of water, those 
of wind, those of steam, and those of electricity. Ani- 

238 



VOLITION 239 

mals of every description, man included, are idea motors, 
operated by the notions which they have in their heads. 

What is of chief importance as regards the will is 
that every creature has some peculiar bent of mind by 
which he does things. Nearly everything that a creature 
performs is the outcome of habits, whence the saying that 
character fixes destiny means no more than that habits 
fix it. To set forth, therefore, what are the conditions of 
habit must be to set forth the conditions of will. We 
are required, in fact, to describe the whole system of 
conditions on which action depends. 

The conditions of will, it is manifest, are either sub- 
jective or objective, the subjective conditions being dis- 
position and thought, the objective conditions being the 
bodily constitution and the nature of things in general. 
The constitution of our bodies, so far as the will is con- 
cerned, reduces to the nervous system, the nature of 
things in general to quality, quantity, and relation. We 
may put the matter another way : a creature consists of 
body and mind, and things around him have quality, 
quantity, and relation. Six different determinations of 
the will, then, obtain — the nervous, the dispositional, 
the deliberative, the qualitative, the quantitative, and the 
relational. Possibly for the word determination we 
should say condition. What is meant is that, if we take 
up each of the six points relative to the will, we take 
up all that is of importance regarding it. 

The nervous determination of the will is illustrated 
in the case of diseases, in the case of manias, and in the 
case of instinctive actions. 

To take up cases of disease, or at least what seem 
to be such; there are certain persons who, owing to the 



240 VOLITION 

state of their nerves, if left to themselves, are unable 
to get out of bed or even to rise from a chair. If any- 
body speaks to them, the purpose which they have to 
get out of bed or to rise from a chair becomes suffi- 
ciently strong to affect their muscles — then they can 
easily do the one or the other. Some persons who are 
accounted lazy may, after all, owe their peculiarity to 
nothing but a state of the nerves. We often find men, 
for example, who will do very little work unless some- 
body keeps putting ideas into their heads, their own 
ideas being too faint, it should seem, to affect their 
muscles very much. As long as we exert our influence 
over them they work. well enough, but the moment this 
is withdrawn they are as indolent as ever. 

On the other hand, the muscles of certain persons, 
owing to disease, respond too readily to suggestion. 
Such persons are afflicted with what is sometimes called 
insanity of the muscles. They make up faces, twist 
their bodies into awkward shapes, jerk their shoulders 
up, and suddenly extend their limbs. St. Vitus' dance 
is an instance of this. In the case of locomotor ataxia 
it seems to the person afflicted as if between his feet 
and the ground is something soft. When he tries to 
step, his foot is suddenly thrown out and his head de- 
scends rapidly. If he looks up or shuts his eyes, he 
will totter and perhaps fall down. It is for this reason 
that there are persons that cannot walk in the dark. 

The excessive use of alcohol produces a diseased state 
of the nerves that influences action. An inebriate is 
set to acting by the smell of whiskey. The smell of it 
gives him the idea of drinking. This idea in his head 
pulls the string that sets in motion his body. It comes 



VOLITION 241 

about, then, that the smell of whiskey takes him where 
whiskey is to be had. Burns, the Scottish poet, declared 
that to get rum he would not hesitate to pass in front 
of blazing cannon. The fact that certain drunkards can 
be cured by prescriptions proves that their difficulty is 
in the nerves. The physical condition removed, they 
recover. 

A certain kind of mania is that for cleanliness. There 
are persons who, at the sight of water, must fall to wash- 
ing their hands. Not all great Neptune's ocean, to 
their minds, can wash their hands clean from their stains. 
Such persons are, as it were, propelled by water. The 
idea of water sets them in motion. 

Another mania is that for danger. We find, for 
example, persons who say they are tempted to leap out 
of windows at great height. The idea of danger so 
works on their nerves that it is hardly possible for them 
to control their muscles by other ideas. From this fact 
it was found necessary to cover the top of a certain 
tower in London with a cage, so many persons having 
leaped from it to destruction. 

Bearing on this subject, we have related a certain 
extraordinary experience of a man. He was in the city 
of Halle, where is a church with two high towers, these 
towers connected near the top by a stone bridge. Hav- 
ing reached the bridge by a winding stair inside one of 
the towers, the man went across the bridge, terror- 
stricken, although he knew there was not the slightest 
danger, a stone wall being on either side of him, several 
feet high. He did not dare to walk back over the bridge, 
but crawled on his hands and knees to get over it, and 
descended as soon as he could. To this day, he says, 



242 VOLITION 

whenever he thinks of that Httle bridge, high up in the 
air, he is still seized with fear, shrugs his shoulders, and 
writhes his limbs. 

Some persons say they can hardly resist the tempta- 
tion to put themselves in front of moving trains. 

Instinctive actions are such as one performs immedi- 
ately on suggestion, as, for example, shutting the eyes 
to keep the dust out. As somebody has said, our ner- 
vous system is so organized that certain impressions 
that are made by things on us have the effect to pull 
the triggers that set in motion the parts that perform 
the work. If we step and are nigh unto falling, we 
come quickly to our own rescue, and in a way surpris- 
ingly effective, although we deliberate not at all about 
it. We act merely on the impulse of the occasion. 
And this is also a nervous determination. 

The dispositional determination of the will may be 
observed both in animals and in men. The case of ani- 
mals may be considered, because what applies to them 
applies by analogy to men. 

Chickens, a few days after they are hatched out, will 
scratch the ground in search of insects, although they 
cannot have learned to do so from previous experience. 
Spalding had chickens hatched in the dark that, on 
being taken into the light, in two minutes followed 
bugs with their eyes, the same as do old fowls. Ducks 
one day old will catch flies on the wing. A young 
turkey when first he heard the chirp of a hawk ran to 
the other side of the yard in great fear. A young chim- 
panzee, at the first sight of a snake, took the greatest 
alarm. Horses that have never seen a lion become rest- 
less the moment they scent one. Dogs, it is said, attack 



VOLITION 243 

those who eat dogs' flesh, even those who have any- 
thing to do with it. Nicholls relates that he knew a 
dog that unaccountably attacked a man coming into a 
hotel. Upon investigation it was found that the man 
was a butcher. Huggins declares he had a dog which 
started back in fear at the first butcher-shop he ever saw. 
A tame beaver will, in the night, carry wood to bank 
up against the door of the farmer's house, doing this 
because his ancestors, in the wild state, piled up wood 
to build a dam. Little animals exist in the mountains 
of Norway called Lemings, averaging in size between 
a rat and a mouse. These at times descend in great 
numbers into the plains, traveling by night and living 
on roots. They are attacked by cattle and other ani- 
mals, but, being so numerous, their progress is not 
stayed till they reach the Atlantic. Then, with un- 
broken front, they plunge into its waves and swim until 
they are all drowned. It has been sought to explain 
this strange performance on the ground that such ani- 
mals were once able to emigrate to America — Norway 
being connected with America, it was thought, by land 
since submerged. The posterity of the Lemings, the 
theory has been, tries to get to America, notwithstand- 
ing the changed conditions. 

The power of disposition to control actions is, how- 
ever, just as well illustrated by the course of men. A 
certain sea-captain, when he had left off following the 
sea, could not content himself without having a place 
in his back-yard raised in imitation of the deck of a 
ship, on which he might promenade. Lee, the general 
who was dismissed by Washington for misconduct at 
the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778, had after his 



244 VOLITION 

retirement but one room in his house, which was divided 
by chalk-Hnes into spaces, one of which he called his 
parlor, one his library, one his dining-room, one his 
kitchen, and several his bedrooms. He took his posi- 
tion upon a raised platform from which he could over- 
look the whole. Accustomed to military life, he wanted 
his household on the plan of a battle-field. The houses 
of primitive men probably contained but one room, till 
some reformer arose to put in a partition. What oppo- 
sition he met with, by what tortures the partitionists 
suffered, history does not tell us. We have, too, all 
of us heard the story of the man who went to mill with 
a bag upon his shoulder, the wheat in one end, a stone 
in the other. The man's son proposed that he do away 
with the stone, merely putting part of the wheat in one 
end and part of it in the other end of the bag, this 
arrangement enabling him just as well to balance the 
bag upon his shoulder. But the old man said it was 
the strangest notion of which he ever heard; if the boy 
referred to it again he should flog him. 

We have here the whole subject of heredity. We get 
dispositions from our ancestors. 

Children are born with certain characteristics and 
proclivities, being by nature able to adapt themselves to 
the different men and women with whom they come in 
contact, avoiding harm from some and getting advan- 
tage from others. For example, a boy was known to 
take a decided dislike to a man from the first, although 
he had had no previous knowledge that the man was 
bad, as in fact he turned out to be. Poets, it is said, 
are born, and not made! Statesmen, sculptors, and 
painters probably brought most of their talent with them 



VOLITION 245 

into the world — Napoleon, Phidias, Raphael, who sup- 
poses that they learned each his own art in the brief 
span of this earthly life? Who by taking thought can 
become an inventor like Edison? Mozart, when but 
four years old, could play the piano, and with great 
power of expression. Even when an infant he gained 
a knowledge of music from listening to the exercises 
of his sister. 

Another condition of action is thought, seeing that 
by thinking over the consequences of things we come 
to exercise prudence with regard to them. 

Men weigh the reasons for and against the several 
courses of action, and on what they deem the best rea- 
son proceed to act. The story which Plutarch tells of 
Julius Caesar furnishes an example. Entertaining a 
company at Ravenna one night, forty-nine years before 
the Christian era, Caesar, with a weight upon his mind, 
begged of a sudden to be excused, saying they should 
make merry until his return. To this day, however, he 
has failed to put in an appearance. Entering a carriage 
and going in the opposite direction, then quickly chang- 
ing his course, he drove to the Rubicon, a stream which 
formed the boundary of the province over which he 
exercised command. Standing on the bank of the river, 
reasons for and against crossing it passed through his 
mind. For it occurred to him, says Plutarch, to con- 
sider what posterity would think of it. Should he cross 
the river a civil war was sure to ensue, wherein many 
of his countrymen would be slain; he might be unsuc- 
cessful, his reputation might be lost, his motives might 
be misjudged, the influence of his party might cease. 
On the other hand, should he not cross the river, it was 



246 VOLITION 

certain he would lose his command; his renown, which 
now fills the world, would not come to exist; the cause 
of liberty that he believed himself to represent might 
be undone. Having thus balanced the reasons for and 
against crossing the river, it seemed to him, on the 
whole, best to cross it. 

It would be a great mistake to suppose that we do 
not ourselves deliberate about everything much after the 
same fashion. We have to decide what kind of diet 
we shall have — vegetarian, meat, or mixed, how com- 
pounded and how cooked; we have to decide what 
shapes and what colors we shall be clothed in; we have 
to decide what kinds of carpets, what patterns of wall- 
paper we shall have; we have to decide what kind of 
a physician we shall employ — allopathic, homoeopathic, 
hydropathic, electropathic, osteopathic, or psycopathic; 
we have to decide what schools we shall attend, what 
studies pursue; we have to decide what vocations we 
shall follow, what companions we shall choose. 

At every cross-road of life there is a sphinx pro- 
posing to us a riddle, the which we must either guess' 
or be devoured by her. We proceed in the same way 
that Caesar did. Having first compared the respective 
merits of the courses of action that are open to us, we 
select one on the ground of its preference, this kind of 
choice being called deliberative, elective, or free. 

Men of opposite habits, however, differ on the same 
thing, even after deliberation. One chooses to eat vege- 
tables, another to eat meat, one to drink wine, another 
to drink water. On more important questions choices 
are equally varying, there being hundreds of religious 
sects, to say nothing about the divisions in politics. 



VOLITION 247 

How, then, it is asked, can men be free moral agents if, 
notwithstanding their dehberations, each, nevertheless, 
follows the bent of his mind? 

On the one hand, it is maintained that whenever we 
choose one way we have at the same time power to 
choose not that way, but some other. Unless this were 
so, it is said, we should not be responsible for our 
actions, nobody being to blame for what he cannot help. 
On the other hand, it is objected that unless one were 
governed by his habits we should not depend on him to 
do things as we do. If people were not governed by 
their habits it would make no difference, it is said, in 
what bank we deposit our money, seeing that any 
banker may at any time do anything, nobody knows 
what. If people are not governed by their habits, it 
would not surprise us should the Darwinians any day 
undertake to persuade us that the heavens and earth 
were created on the 23d of October, 4004 years before 
the birth of Christ. 

We have accordingly two parties, one of them main- 
taining that whatever we do is the result of arbitrary 
choice, the other that whatever we do is the result of 
habit, these being in ceaseless conflict. On the waves 
of the battle their standards ever rise and fall. Some 
say that our side is getting ahead, some say that your 
side is getting ahead, but others say that neither of us 
is getting ahead. 

Kant proposed a reconciliation of free-will and neces- 
sity which has become famous. Every action of a man, 
so far as we can observe, says he, goes back for its 
cause to some other, so that finally it would follow that 
the conditions under which a man was born were due to 



248 VOLITION 

his previous acts. This fact, however, if indeed it be 
a fact, avails us nothing in fixing the man's responsi- 
bihty, seeing that we have ever to go back in time to 
hunt it up. The case, nevertheless, will be altered if 
we suppose that the man is of such a nature as never 
to have begun to be at all. His choice would then have 
been made from all eternity, with nothing previous to 
it, it being possible to conceive time itself as having 
originated with his choice. He would be free, since all 
his actions in time would be the outcome of his original 
choice which was without date, all dates having mani- 
festly to be in time, but of any particular action of his 
we could say it was determined by a previous one. 
Without having power, therefore, in each particular in- 
stance to do otherwise than he does, he would yet be 
responsible for what he does. Any action of his would 
be predestinated, determined beforehand, but he would 
be the one who predestinated it. 

But to say that a man can be bound and free at the 
same time — all his actions predestinated, yet he respon- 
sible for them — this, it is objected, is the same as to 
say that a door can be open and shut at the same time. 
It turns out, however, that a door can be open and shut 
at the same time — there being a great many such doors, 
consisting, as they do, of revolving fans. Freedom and 
necessity, indeed, may be but two sides of the same 
thing, just as unchangeability and changeability are; to 
take an example, we hold that the atoms, that is to say, 
those which are ultimate, are unchangeable, though we 
admit that they change their places. 

The quality of things is another condition of the will, 
whether they be attractive, whether they be important, 
whether their mastery be easy. 



VOLITION 249 

To begin with, then, attractiveness aids us in the for- 
mation and retention of habits. The great hold that 
drinking, smoking, vulgarity, gaming, and loafing have 
on people is partially to be explained on this ground. 
Drinking is attractive in more ways than one. First, 
there is the good flavor of the liquor; secondly, there is 
the exhilaration attendant on its use; thirdly, there is 
the pleasure of following the fashion. Suppose the 
matter were otherwise, suppose the liquor had the taste 
of quinine, suppose that the drinking of it made one 
sick, suppose it were unfashionable to drink it? Would, 
then, so many be addicted to its use? Learning to 
smoke is at first disagreeable, and this is to a certain 
extent a bar to it; but smoking is fashionable, and very 
soon becomes agreeable. Vulgarity is fashionable among 
a certain class of people, but unfashionable among an- 
other class — it depends, therefore, very much on the 
company one keeps. To vulgarity a certain pleasure 
attaches from the gratification it affords vanity. The 
vulgar man seems to himself to set at naught the usages 
of a better class of society than that to which he be- 
longs; sometimes he even seems to himself to be, as it 
were, about to suspend the laws of nature themselves — 
^tna, perhaps, will cease to thunder if he goes by! 
Moreover, vulgarity does not, like the use of tobacco, 
make one sick. The use of the rod in early life, render- 
ing it less attractive, does often prevent the formation 
of the habit. Gaming is attractive, because it is free 
from the details of a petty business, the gamester being 
like a superintendent, general, or prime minister, man- 
aging things only in their generalities. Every kind of 
business, he says, is a game. What is the use of buying 



250 VOLITION 

a stock of goods, taking chances that they will not suffer 
damage, that they can be sold at a profit, that the money 
for them can be collected? One might better go to the 
chances themselves at once, without any intermediaries. 
Let him gamble directly for the results. Disappoint- 
ment tends to make a man put away gaming. This 
shows that the habit tends to lessen its grip upon him 
as its attractiveness wanes. Loafing, likewise, has a 
great hold on people because of its attractiveness. A 
man has been known to go every day for twenty years 
to the corner grocery, there to sit, on the average, six 
hours a day, gossiping. 

Curious things also have attractiveness for us, and, 
therefore, an influence on our actions. Emerson remarks 
that Caesar, at the time he was dictator and was looking 
after affairs in Egypt, had his curiosity so aroused about 
the sources of the Nile that he was willing to leave 
everything, if only he might discover them. The quest 
after the North Pole is another case illustrating the same 
thing. We may cite still another example. It was once 
asked of a man what three things he would most desire 
to know, whereupon he replied, the state of the dead, 
what is on the planets, what is in the minds of others. 
No doubt, if any of us were persuaded that he could 
discover somewhat about any one of these things, there 
would be no limit to the amount of effort he would put 
forth to do so. 

Another quality of things which has to do with action 
is their importance; when at first a boy keeps himself 
at his tasks, he would a thousand times rather be at 
play, but the importance of his task makes him perse- 
vere in it. It has often been remarked, also, what one 



VOLITION 251 

will do through fear. A man, says Kant, who thinks 
he cannot perform a certain action, could easily enough 
do it were his life staked on its performance. We may, 
however, find an example of less violent form. A 
teacher finds great difficulty in keeping his pupils to 
their studies, not being able at times to maintain order 
in the room. At last, however, the examination comes. 
There may be a hundred pupils, each writing at his desk 
answers to questions. It is still as death. The fear of 
failure is the magic that works such wonders with the 
pupils. The marking system used at the recitation of a 
class has much the same effect — may, therefore, be jus- 
tified on grounds of expediency, however inadequate as 
a test of real attainments it may be. Men working for 
property or for power have their actions influenced by 
the importance they attach to them. A man denies him- 
self not only luxuries, but even necessaries, to lay up 
money. Again, what unremitting toil and long hours a 
man like Bonaparte will bear to gain power! 

The ease with which a thing is mastered is another 
quality which has to do with our actions. We have here 
explained what might otherwise seem incomprehensible, 
the great hold that drink and such like habits quickly 
obtain over people. Suppose that, in order to learn to 
drink, a man had to be drilled several hours a day for 
a term of years, that is to say, suppose it were not very 
easy to learn to drink, would so many acquire the habit? 
One to become expert in vulgarity does not have to take 
a long course of instruction, as he does to learn Latin. 
Gambling, at least that form of it that depends merely 
on chance, requires little or no preparation. Any habit, 
even though formed with difficulty, when it has once 



252 VOLITION 

come to perfection, makes practice in it easy, whence it 
may be hard to get rid of it. This appHes, of course, to 
good as well as to bad habits — accounts, therefore, for 
the pains employers take to select men of approved habits. 

The quantity of things, as well as their quality, pre- 
scribes laws to action. 

We have, first, extensive quantity, the number of 
things. This has to do particularly with space, since 
the number of things are beside one another in space. 
Here, so far as actions are concerned, the principle is 
limitation — make the matters of action as few as pos- 
sible. The principle comes to what is called the division 
of labor. As many as eighteen different kinds of work 
were, as Adam Smith says, in his day involved in mak- 
ing pins. If any one man had to do all these kinds of 
work himself alone, he could not make more than ten 
or twenty, if, indeed, he could make one pin a day. 
With each man doing but one kind of work, however, 
these same eighteen men could in one day make a hun- 
dred thousand pins! Thus, by this quantitative condi- 
tion of the will, there is a difference in results not merely 
of a hundredfold, not merely of a thousandfold, but of 
one-tenth a millionfold. Each man, by concentrating 
his efforts, acquires the habit of doing his work quickly. 
He thereby becomes so expert that he can do a great 
deal. If he had to go from one thing to another, he 
could not do anything well. His action, in short, is 
regulated by the quantity of things, here extensive. 

According to the economist Say, there are or were 
seventy different kinds of work in making ordinary 
playing-cards, the which, if any one man had to do them 
all, he could not in a day make more than one or two 



VOLITION 253 

cards. Thirty men, however, each doing but one or 
two, or at most but three kinds of work, could in a day 
make fifteen thousand. 

Reports made by a committee to Parliament showed 
as many kinds of work to be necessary in making 
watches as there are counties in the State of Illinois — 
one hundred and two. If one man had to do them all, 
it was said, he could not in a whole lifetime finish a 
single watch. As watches are now made, there are 
more kinds of work on them than there are days in the 
year, so that it is more than ever evident that no one 
man, alone and unaided, can in any reasonable time 
make a watch. 

One of the Rothschilds, it is said, being asked if he 
wanted his son to follow nothing but banking, remarked 
that it was just what he wanted. For, said he, if a man 
be merchant, brewer, banker, and everything else, it is 
only a question of time when he will be sold out by the 
sheriff. It is well worth our while, also, earnestly tp 
consider that remarkable statement of Andrew Carnegie 
that he has never yet known a man who understood two 
kinds of business. 

We have, however, in the second place, protensive 
quantity, that is to say, quantity of time. By putting 
a great deal of time on a thing we may become expert 
in it. Certain persons, learning to play musical instru- 
ments, practise five or six hours a day, their dexterity 
being due to the quantity of time they repeat the acts. 

A skilful seamstress handles a needle in a way which 
must seem miraculous to a clumsy beginner, yet she her- 
self was perhaps clumsy at first; she has become expert 
simply from using the needle so many times. 



254 VOLITION 

We have seen a man take four balls, which he all the 
while keeps in the air, gently raising each up as it falls. 
It may be that he uses knives instead of balls, twirling 
each as he throws it up. It may be that he even uses 
torches, keeping four of them upright, tossing up each 
as it falls. He comes to be able to do such a thing as 
this by the number of times he has practised it. 

The egg-dancing girl, as she is called, illustrates the 
same thing. Around her head is a band, at short dis- 
tances on which are fastened little nooses, these in fact 
extending the whole length of the band. Without ceas- 
ing to dance, she must take, one by one, the eggs from 
the basket which she holds in her hand and tighten 
around it one of these nooses. When she has the eggs 
all out of the basket, she must take them, one by one, 
from the nooses and replace them in the basket, continu- 
ing all this while to dance. What care she must take 
not to break any of the eggs, besides that care necessary 
to surmount the other difficulties in the case, it is hardly 
possible for us to conceive. The proficiency of the girl 
is gotten by practice. 

A man of the name of Patch was once accustomed to 
walk a rope stretched across the Niagara River. He 
became so expert at it that he was able to stop on his 
way over, balance a stove on the rope, and there cook 
his dinner, maintaining all the time the utmost com- 
posure. Certainly none of us would expect to succeed 
in doing the same thing the first time he tried it. 

But we have, thirdly, intensive quantity, number of 
degrees. Actions are performed easier if we take the 
difficulty little by little, gradually overcoming it. It is 
conceivable that all manufacturing might be done by 



VOLITION 255 

unskilled labor provided that the work were so laid out 
that each workman had but the merest trifle to accom- 
plish. Perhaps those who talk so much about general 
equality hope to reach it on this principle, the wages of 
everybody to be the same because one does as much as 
another. A boy learning to swim is first instructed in 
some very simple positions and motions, then in those 
a degree more complex, and so on. A teacher remarked 
that he considered calculus no more difficult than frac- 
tions, provided the learner was prepared to enter on the 
study of it, having reached it by passing all the inter- 
mediate grades. 

The grades which are established in a school exem- 
plify the principle, graduation meaning that one has 
passed all the degrees below a certain point of attain- 
ment. Classification in a school, however, is, we know, 
anything but thorough, pupils being treated in the same 
way who differ greatly. Whatever disadvantages, there- 
fore, might have been apparent in the old-fashioned way 
of having a private tutor for children, at least one great 
advantage was certainly attained, the lesson could be 
better adapted to the needs of the individual. 

We have, in the last place, that condition of the will 
which depends on the relation of things. 

In order to compass this subject, it is plain we must 
have a notion what the primary classes of relations are. 
Manifestly they are relations of exclusion and relations 
of inclusion, a third class being composed of these two 
taken together. 

Take the first class of relations, that denominated as 
exclusion, in which one thing interferes with another; 
we have it illustrated when one way of doing a thing 



256 VOLITION 

precludes another way of doing it. A man, for example, 
has, as he supposes, skill in playing a piano, but on 
going to a conservatory he finds that he has to unlearn 
it, his previous training interfering with the training he 
is about to take. 

What is known as diverting the mind seems to de- 
pend on the principle of exclusion. Balky horses, it is 
asserted, on being taken to the city and there used, balk 
no longer, the constant noise diverting the mind of the 
horse, so that the notion of balking no longer occurs 
to him. 

Diverting of the mind is often a good thing to make 
use of — exclude the conditions of doing the thing in 
question by introducing the condition of doing some- 
thing at variance with it. The propensity to make use 
of pernicious or worthless literature, for example, can 
be cured by opening up the opportunity for good liter- 
ature. What is called breaking the will is often noth- 
ing but strengthening it. For example, a child who is 
whipped for doing something may thereby only have it 
more strongly impressed on his mind, so that he is more 
likely to do it again. We are told, for example, that a 
boy, having been punished for something — probably not 
for a misdeed, but only for something held to be such — 
presently made application to be punished again. He 
wanted to repeat what he had done, but preferred to 
have the punishment first. A better treatment of such 
cases manifestly is to divert the mind. Give the child 
something else to do and think about incompatible with 
what it is desired he should not engage in. 

Another class of relations in which things stand to 
one another is that for which we may use the word in- 



VOLITION 257 

elusion. Certain kinds of habits and actions involve 
others. For example, the habit of obedience somewhat 
insures the performance of certain actions. This is why 
Girard was accustomed to impose ridiculous tasks on 
his men, requiring them, for example, to move a heap 
of stones from one place to another one day, and the 
next day to move it back again. He wanted to test 
their capacity for implicit obedience. And Bonaparte, 
we are told, promoted the sentry who refused to let him 
pass the lines, knowing that his habit of obedience fitted 
him for an office. 

The habit of attention is also a thing on which much 
depends. We are told, for example, of a frivolous girl, 
who could never get any good from study till her atten- 
tion was secured by telling her of the rings of Saturn, 
how they give perpetual light to the planet, so that, ex- 
cept on cloudy nights, street-lamps there are not neces- 
sary. This allusion, however inferior might have been 
its scientific value, so excited her curiosity, it is said, 
that she became a good student. 

It is on this principle of one thing's including another, 
so far as actions are concerned, that system has impor- 
tance for the will. One action leads directly to another, 
one action is implied in another, all the actions in a 
very few. 

We are told of a method of preaching, for instance, 
which will illustrate it. The preacher, having fixed on 
an idea about which he wishes to talk, proceeds to find 
three heads under which it may be considered, each of 
which he subdivides into three others, the last in each 
set being of the nature of an illustration. Every ser- 
mon he writes is always on this plan and is always 



258 VOLITION 

twenty minutes long, on twenty pages of paper, and one 
hundred words to the page. It is said it was wonder- 
ful how well some who could not preach at all, if they 
went about it at random, could get along on this plan, 
bad as in some respects it might have been. 

We are able on the same principle to understand 
wherein the good of manual training consists, namely, 
in the fact that one's activity is systematically directed 
in a realistic process. This we may exemplify by the 
way splits are gotten out for baskets. The worker takes 
a log of white oak, say, a few inches in diameter, a few 
feet in length. He splits it into halves, then into quar- 
ters, and so on, till he has pieces sufficiently small. 
From these he removes the heart and bark, then brings 
them into shape, narrow at the ends and enlarging to 
the middle. These he halves, quarters, and so on, till 
he has splits of the requisite thickness, which he pro- 
ceeds to smooth. In short, he always knows just what 
to do, the whole prescribing the parts, and the parts of 
the parts on down to the smallest. 

Pupils who have followed such a process as this are 
likely to develop habits of systematic action. 

What is true' of making baskets is true of adopting 
ways. We are caught in the process of acting. We 
live in a world of organized activity. We come natu- 
rally into a system of accepted behaviors and beliefs. 
We are easily drawn into this system of organized 
activity, acquiring in a short time by imitation what 
otherwise it would take us a lifetime to learn. We have 
only to get into the swim, so to say, to be borne on, such 
a control does the relation of things by inclusion have 
over the will. 



VOLITION 259 

The object of taking a special training in something 
is largely that one may put himself under a system of 
conditions which will carry him along. 

The wonders which such men as Alexander, Csesar, 
and Napoleon accomplished were not so much due to 
their ability as to the system of conditions into which 
they were able to get, a system of conditions into which, 
perhaps, the times placed them. They were in such a 
system of organized activity that things did themselves, 
as it were. 

Change of conditions may, therefore, above every- 
thing else, be beneficial to one. A man by changing his 
room, his furniture, his mode of life, may get into a 
better way of doing things. One addicted to some bad 
habit, as that of drunkenness, for example, may be re- 
formed by changing his associations. 

The third and last class of relations in which things 
may stand to one another is that in which a thing, in- 
deed, is involved in others, but partially so only, the 
relation, therefore, being partly one of exclusion, partly 
one of inclusion. The Esquimos, for example, coming 
out of the North to London, would find themselves 
under two systems, each of which would at the same 
time exclude and include the other. Naturally they 
would be reluctant to change their clothing, yet would 
almost be under the necessity of so doing; naturally 
they would dislike the dishes set before them, yet would 
have to eat something; naturally they would detest the 
beds and bedrooms, yet would get sleepy. 

First, then, everybody to a certain extent acts accord- 
ing to what he has formerly been. For example, to all 
the expostulations which were made to an old man to 



26o VOLITION 

induce him to take out life insurance, the only answer 
that could be gotten out of him was that he never fell 
in with it. Secondly, however, new conditions have the 
effect to make one change his ways. A man who will 
not buy a machine, for example, yet on hearing its 
merits so highly extolled by the agent, finally concludes 
to take it. 

As a matter of fact, the old and the new are always 
contending for mastery of us; we are partly precluded 
from certain actions, partly impelled toward them. 
What is meant by saying that we should embrace the 
first opportunity of putting a good resolution into prac- 
tice is that we should quickly get into the new current 
of things, lest the old one carry us away. What is meant 
by saying that we should allow no exception in our con- 
duct when once we have entered on a new course of 
action is that we should not allow the old current to 
catch us again, get us into its system. 



CHAPTER XII 

DESIRE 

Desire is the feeling of wanting something, primarily 
of wanting to live. The fundamental forms of desire 
are, therefore, for food and for offspring. Through the 
unfolding of life and the development of society, how- 
ever, it has come about that the desires are for wealth, 
power, and fame, if on the one hand we neglect the 
satisfaction of appetite and on the other the desire for 
knowledge. But, as was said, the primary forms of de- 
sire are for nourishment and for propagation. 

Definite stages of progress in the satisfaction of desire, 
particularly of that of possessing utilities and conven- 
iences may be noted. 

The amoeba is an animal, consisting of a single cell, 
so small usually as to be seen only by the aid of a micro- 
scope. It is a nucleus surrounded by a less dense en- 
velope. To eat, it folds portions of its body around a 
speck of nourishment; to walk, it bulges out and con- 
tracts portions of its body. It multiplies in that its 
nucleus splitting in two, over the parts thus formed 
grow envelopes. According to certain evolutionists, all 
animals have descended from such an organism. 

Sponges and corals, which are a multiplicity of ani- 
mals joined together and growing fast to the ground, 
get their nourishment from the currents of water which 
they draw to themselves — a socialistic community with 
a minimum of labor. Oysters, clams, and the like also 

261 



2 62 DESIRE 

supply their wants in the simplest manner, these wants, 
indeed, being few. Echinoderms, such as sea-cucum- 
bers, move by hydraulic contrivances, water being forced 
from tubes into feet or fans. Fishes, though vertebrates, 
yet are water animals, swimming from place to place in 
quest of food, and depositing eggs in vast quantities 
from which other fishes grow. These vast quantities of 
eggs insure the preservation of the species in that, though 
most of them may come to nothing, yet enough of them 
will be productive. What are called mud-fish are part 
fish and part frog. They live during the winter months 
in rivers and bogs, breathing through gills, the same as 
fishes breathe, but in the summer they go for a vacation 
into dry mud, where, under coverings of leaves, they 
breathe air with lungs the same as amphibians. Their 
desires have risen above those of common fish; they 
make use of two sets of conditions, are, in short, aris- 
tocratic. They have the form of eels, which latter have 
somewhat the form of worms. Worms are assigned a 
great place in the animal world — according to some, not 
only cattle and horses, but even men are descended from 
them. 

Worms of various sorts have desires which extend 
beyond the mere questions of subsistence and propaga- 
tion to that of shelter. They have constructed tubes of 
sand in which they dwell, or they make tubes by gluing 
together shells. Many worms also have caves in the 
earth, eating the soil, being nourished by the vegetable 
matter which it contains. When the weather is dry they 
descend deeper into the earth, as they do also in winter 
to get away from the frost. 

Animals which have legs are able to satisfy desires 



DESIRE 263 

better than those which at best can only swim or drag 
themselves along, frogs, toads, and lizards, for example. 
The ancient lizards, which were enormous in size, had 
naturally to have a vast supply of food, so that it was 
difficult, we may suppose, for them to satisfy their 
desires. Elephants present a similar case; for example, 
an elephant may weigh five or six tons, that is to say, 
more than ten thousand pounds, whence we can form 
some idea of the amount it takes to keep him. It is 
conceivable, indeed, that animals as much larger than 
any animals known to have ever existed on the earth 
might have been developed in the course of time but for 
the impossibility such animals would have found to 
satisfy desire. 

The satisfaction of desire in birds is somewhat com- 
plex. They have one home in the north and one home 
in the south, flying thousands of miles over land and sea 
to pass from the one to the other. Some of them, it is 
said, fly hundreds of miles an hour, and are sometimes 
at a height of two or three miles. Birds which in sum- 
mer live in the far north, being habituated to a cold 
climate, in the winter come to countries from which 
other birds have flown to the south, these countries now 
being warm enough for them. Birds, it will be evident, 
live a life with which that of the lower animals will not 
compare. 

Many beasts provide themselves some sort of houses, 
usually holes in the ground, but not infrequently holes 
in trees, trying to satisfy the desire for shelter. Beavers 
make use of systematic means for satisfying their de- 
sires, having advanced in this direction farther than any 
other beasts. Beavers gnaw down trees, which they, 



264 DESIRE 

then gnawing, trim up, making use of which they con- 
struct dams across streams, causing the water above the 
dam to become of the required depth. Sometimes the 
dam consists almost entirely of the wood piled up, the 
water running through it, but not in sufficient quanti- 
ties to lower the supply above. Sometimes, however, 
the dam is a solid wall, the beavers having mixed much 
mud and many stones with the wood. Often, too, a 
dam not so high is built above or below the main one 
to lessen the pressure of the water on the main dam. 
The beavers construct houses in the water above the 
dam by piling up sticks, stones, and mud, till the struct- 
ure rises a little above the water, where they make a 
floor by gnawing the sticks bare, and upon this erect 
the house. They have only one room, but have from 
it two entrances into the water. Where the banks of 
the stream are steep, they dig away the earth so as to 
form inclines, down which they drag sticks and poles. 
What is more remarkable, they dig canals several feet 
deep and several feet wide back from the water so that 
they can raft down sticks and logs for use; they are 
Known even to have systems of locks. They live on 
bark, twigs, and even on wood, all of which they store 
away in the water below. Only one family inhabits a 
house, though the family may consist of a dozen beav- 
ers, since the young beavers do not go out into the 
world to shift for themselves till about the third year, 
when they become of age. Beavers, as it seems, indulge 
also in yachting, an old one swimming around the pond 
with the young ones on his back, so complex has become 
the satisfaction of their desires. 

The only animals approaching the beaver in compli- 



DESIRE 265 

cated polity are the bees. The cells of the comb are 
six-sided, a side thus being equal in length to the radius 
of the circle of which the sides are chords, speaking 
geometrically, the result being that the system of cells 
is constructed with the least possible amount of wax. 
The bees use these cells for storing away their food, 
honey being the chief of it, and for holding the eggs 
from which new bees are hatched. Bees have division 
of labor and system in their work, and have established 
a sort of republic. 

An opinion regarding the animals which has been 
entertained may be briefly alluded to. Insects of all 
kinds, bees among them, were too small to have obtained 
the dominion of the world, no matter how intelligent 
they might have been, but the same could not have been 
said of the beavers. With man out of the way, it is 
maintained, there would have been nobody to contest 
their supremacy. Even as it was, their empire extended 
from Canada to Mexico. We may — such is the conten- 
tion — consider that the end which animal life has before 
it is to exist intellectually, that if men had perished from 
the earth, providence would have supplied the defect as 
best it could, installing in their place that species of 
animal which exhibited the greatest fitness to fill it. This 
fancy, however, need not detain us, since we come to 
fact. 

Men, even in a low stage of thought, rise above ani- 
mals in the satisfaction of desire, as appears in their 
use of stone, fire, leather, and wood, the principal arti- 
cles, indeed, the use of which first distinguishes savages 
from brutes. 

Men wrought spear-heads of stone, which fasten- 



266 DESIRE 

ing, to sticks with cords of animals, they possessed 
weapons to be used against beasts. Out of stone they 
also worked knives, which enabled them to skin and 
dress the animals they killed, scrapers also, with which 
they would clean the hides. Many an animal also was 
killed with hammers or mauls, these being dressed stones 
fastened with cords to handles. Axes were stones not 
only dressed, but also brought to an edge, and attached 
to sticks. Savages used such axes not only against ani- 
mals, but also against one another, employing them as 
weapons of warfare. The tomb of Aldus M'Gladus in 
Kirkcudbrightshire, opened some years ago, was found 
to contain the skeleton of a man, the upper bone of whose 
arm contained a stone sliver, doubtless from a prehis- 
toric axe. Strange as it may seem, even surgical opera- 
tions were performed with stone instruments, sometimes 
a portion of the human skull even being removed with 
them, the person recovering and doing well, as is proved 
by the remaining skulls which show the bone healed. 
The object of thus trepanning the skull, it is supposed, 
was to cure epilepsy, the theory being that if a hole were 
made in the head the devils might get out, they doubt- 
less being glad to escape. Savages made their weapons 
and tools out of flint, chipping ofif flake after flake, using 
a hard material for a chisel, the tooth of a shark, for 
•instance. Stones were also rounded and flattened by 
them, which, being turned on each other, constituted the 
first grist-mill. 

Men differ, moreover, from animals in that they make 
use of fire for various purposes, for heat and light, for 
cooking food, for baking clay, and for smelting metals. 
Savages have fire-drills, as the same are called, made of 
stone, which they cause to twirl rapidly, first one way 



DESIRE 267 

and then the other, using to accompHsh this a cord or 
thong, both ends of which are attached to a stick. The 
drill revolving rapidly against some hard material pro- 
duces such friction as to cause the emission of sparks 
of fire, which, catching in something dry, as leaves, 
create a blaze. Fire, indeed, may first have been ob- 
tained from burning forests or from volcanoes. While, 
then, the animal world was wrapped in darkness, men, 
though savages, might spend their evenings in the light 
of their camp-fires, beholding one another's faces and at 
the same time enjoying conversation. Animals were 
compelled to eat their food raw, but men, even though 
their stage of thought was low, might broil their meat 
and roast their vegetables. Certain stones exist which 
have somewhat the shape of cups, besides there are 
gourds and cocoa-nuts, natural vessels. The stone cups 
were raised higher with a rim of clay, the shells were 
coated with the same material, placed upon the fire, the 
clay baked, the result being that men discovered pottery. 
Having vessels which could resist fire, primitive peoples 
put water in them and placed them over the fire, being 
able in this way to boil vegetables or meat. They might 
now have more than one kind of dinner — might have 
roast or boiled ham, just as they chose. Again, metals 
being heated in fire, were softened, and were then beaten 
into knives, spear-heads, and the like. The time, indeed, 
came when men melted the metals, and, filling moulds 
with the liquid, cast them weapons and tools. 

Man further distinguished himself from other mam- 
mals by the use of skins. Scraping the flesh clean from 
hides with little stone adzes, he oiled them, rendering 
them pliable ; this was the primitive tanning. He threw a 
hide about his shoulders, extemporizing a jacket, or about 



268 DESIRE 

his loins, extemporizing a skirt. He learned to fasten 
them on him by tying them together with cords or with 
withes. After a time he learned to cut them into pieces 
and then to sew them together, so as to make shapely 
garments. The skirt in time became divided, forming 
trousers. Where the climate was cold, caps were made 
for the head and moccasins for the feet. Thus it was 
that man became so different in appearance from the 
beasts. But he used skins not only for clothes, but also 
for houses. For, setting up sticks, he hung hides upon 
them, making himself a shelter. Laying skins upon the 
ground, he had a bed. He could, if he wished, put skins 
over him for a blanket. Stranger still, he made kettles 
out of skins. He would dig a hole in the ground and 
line it with a whole hide, so that the edges of the hide 
extended a little over the hole and upon the ground. 
The projections of the hide he caused to be held down 
with stones. Then he would fill the skin with water, 
and put into it turnips or other roots. Heating stones 
in a fire and dropping them into the water, he brought 
it about that the turnips or other roots were boiled. 

Making use of wood, man likewise went far beyond 
the brute. The first thing of wood which he turned to 
account was no doubt the club, a weapon still wielded 
by certain officials among us. When he fastened a stone 
to his club he had a hammer, when he fastened a cut- 
ting tool to his club he had an axe, when he fastened a 
pointed blade to his club he had a spear. The boom- 
erang is a club which, when it has been thrown, will of 
itself return to the hand of the thrower. What a sur- 
prise would such a thing be to a tribe of monkeys, if, 
indeed — which, however, is improbable — they had suffi- 



DESIRE 269 

cient intelligence to observe the fact at all! The bow 
consists of a stick to both ends of which is tied a tightly 
drawn cord. By means of it a small spear, that is to 
say, an arrow, can be thrown with great force, with so 
much force, in fact, as to kill not only birds, but beasts 
as well. Another thing fabricated out of wood was 
the mat, splits for this purpose being plaited together. 
Moreover, by weaving splits or willows, men made bas- 
kets, obtaining receptacles in which to carry things. 
Houses were made out of wood, a frame of poles being 
covered with bark. Wood was also made into boats and 
into vehicles. Logs might first have been fastened to- 
gether to form rafts. Hollowing out and shaping a 
log, however, made of it a canoe. Canoes were also 
made by fastening bark upon a frame of sticks, as we 
now make boats by fastening boards upon a frame of 
beams. The sled, either with merely a flat surface or 
with two runners, was a device of wood for transport- 
ing things overland. 

When, then, mankind had learned what to do with 
stone, fire, leather, and wood, they must have sup- 
posed, comparing themselves with the animals, that 
they had reached the millennial age. Many of their 
descendants, indeed, have not to this day advanced much 
beyond the point then attained. To have accomplished 
so much implied the expenditure of a vast amount of 
thought and a consequent intellectual exaltation before 
undreamed of. 

When, however, civilization became firmly established 
in the world, it made provisions for the satisfaction of 
desire, much more complicated than those which had 
been known to savage men. Peru, indeed, affords a 
good example of what was accomplished in this regard. 



270 DESIRE 

The people were organized, like an army, into squads 
of ten families, over which was an ensign. Ten of these 
squads made a company, over which was a captain; ten 
companies a regiment, over which was a colonel ; and 
ten regiments a division, over which was a brigadier, 
using our terminology. Over each province of the em- 
pire, and there were four of these, was an inspector- 
general. At the head of the whole organization was 
the Inca, the hereditary commander-in-chief of the peo- 
ple. Each man was allotted a piece of land for the 
support of himself and his family, but had also to help 
till the lands not allotted to anyone, the returns from 
these being appropriated to general state uses, as, for 
example, the support of the military, of the priesthood, 
of the artisans, and of the infirm. There was no private 
ownership of land and materials in the sense in which 
we now speak of it. Stone buildings, somewhat resem- 
bling our modern ones, existed in every village as gran- 
aries. Roads connected the villages with one another, 
and about every five miles were public lodging-houses. 
Everybody really worked for the state and was sup- 
ported by it, no such thing existing as private enter- 
prise. There was no money, no buying and no selling. 
The state also provided everybody with house room. 
The houses seem to have been what we now call flats, 
had apartments opening on the corridor, and in the same 
house lived many families. Beggary there could not be, 
since everybody was sure of a good living, was in fact 
born to it — the saying that the world owes one a living 
having been in their case literally true. Marriage was 
compulsory, and a man was allowed but one wife, just 
as he was allowed but one piece of land and but one 



DESIRE 271 

stock of materials. It seems that the state made the 
marriages, selecting for each man his wife. 

Some details regarding the actual state of things in 
the Peruvian empire will better enable us to get a con- 
ception of them. There was an extensive system of 
irrigation, water being conveyed through the country in 
aqueducts and into reservoirs, from which it was con- 
ducted over the fields. For the country was without 
rain, so that, but for this watering, the fields would not 
have produced much. The Peruvians raised the corn 
common to America, more properly called maize, the 
white variety of which, it is said, they grew better and 
larger than any which has been anywhere else or subse- 
quently produced. It is, moreover, affirmed that the 
potatoes which they raised have never been equaled for 
quality. They had no tea or coffee, but instead had 
good cocoa. The peppers of which chili-sauce is made 
were also one of their products. Their cotton was 
much superior to that raised in the Southern States of 
our country — indeed, was without rival, if we except 
Egyptian and sea-island cotton. The game was pre- 
served in the forests and systematically hunted by the 
state for the people. The rest of the meat was supplied 
from herds of llamas and alpacas. The Peruvians had 
no horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, cats, or any other of our 
domestic animals. They made cotton cloth, which they 
stamped with dies, a sort of calico, we might call it. 
Their woolen cloth was made out of the fleece of the 
llama. What we still call alpaca was made by them 
from the shearings of the animal which bears that name. 
They made a very heavy cloth from the fibres of aloes, 
interweaving the cords of animals with them. They 



272 DESIRE 

produced also a sort of a cloth of gold. Not needing 
gold or silver for money, they used it not only for decora- 
tions, but also for utensils. Their pottery was of a very 
high grade, as we know from the great quantities which 
have survived the wreck of their empire. It bore the 
shapes of men and of animals. One kind was made of 
an amalgam of gold and mercury, the mercury vapor- 
izing in the baking. They possessed no iron, but made 
their tools out of copper mixed with silver or tin. They 
put up huge stone buildings, which were beautiful in 
appearance, fitting the stones neatly together and not 
employing mortar. Generally lintels were used for the 
doorways and windows, but arches, made by continually 
extending the layers of masonry, also obtained. As 
they had no glass or other transparent substance, so far 
as we know, their windows were only openings very 
much resembling those in which we put our window- 
frames. It is possible, of course, that their windows 
were curtained. Many of their buildings, according to 
the restorations which have been drawn of them, would 
rival the handsome structures to be found in our great 
cities, nor is this conclusion a matter of guesswork 
merely, seeing that extensive remains of their buildings 
are found. As there were no horses or oxen, the roads 
were, of course, for those who went afoot, but were 
eighteen, twenty-five, and even forty feet wide, paved 
with smooth stones. Obstructions were cut away, 
ravines filled up, and streams bridged. Over the rivers 
were suspension bridges made of cables wrought out of 
willows. The Peruvians had no writing, and conse- 
quently no reading, all their knowledge being held in 
memory and orally transmitted, It is certain, however. 



DESIRE 273 

that they had dramas, composed without the aid of 
writing, one of which, indeed, has come down to us. 
They were able to keep accounts by means of certain 
knots tied in strings, which were hung as fringe upon 
cords. These were cahed quipos. Facts, it is beheved, 
were recorded somewhat in the same way, the quipos 
being mnemonic strings. The Peruvians had a sort of 
rehgion, or at least what is called such. Their great 
temple was erected to the glory of the sun, but had 
apartments respectively for the moon, for the evening 
star, for the rainbow, and for the thunder and light- 
ning. The main idea seems to have been praise for the 
fixed order of nature. We must take into account, 
moreover, that Peru was not a small community like 
Sparta, but a vast empire, a million square miles in ex- 
tent, large as the States of our Union between the Atlan- 
tic and the Mississippi, fifteen hundred miles long and 
four hundred miles broad, and containing ten millions 
of people. This empire, with its grand system of pro- 
viding for human wants, arose by successive growths 
out of the state of things existing among savages of the 
stone age. 

Suppose, then, that the ancestors of apes and men — 
if, indeed, as Darwin teaches, they are the same — lean- 
ing over the battlements of heaven, had beheld the 
Peruvian state, must they not have wondered at the 
progress men had made as compared with what apes had 
accomplished in the satisfaction of desire; must they 
not, on general principles, have conceded that all things 
were possible to men, even evolution to spiritual per- 
fection ? 

The ancient empires of the old world, which were 



2 74 DESIRE 

evolved out of civilized society, offered even greater 
means of satisfying desire. 

According to Diodorus, living was so cheap in Egypt 
that the whole cost of a person from birth to majority 
was not more than three dollars, on the average about 
fourteen cents a year. It can readily be seen that, from 
the warmth of the climate, clothing was hardly worth 
taking into account and that the same might be said of 
house-rent. Moreover, the soil produced so abundantly 
and with so little labor that food was not of much mo- 
ment. We may suppose, for example, that in Egypt a 
few hours' work would produce enough to keep one a 
whole year or more. The Egyptians, accordingly, could 
put in most of their time building great monuments 
which should perpetuate their memory to eternity. 

The people of Babylon lived in a magnificence which 
to the earlier civilized peoples would have been deemed 
Utopian. Babylon was five or ten times the size of the 
present London, but it is to be taken into account that 
the buildings had extensive yards and gardens. The 
whole city was surrounded by a wall three hundred feet 
high and eighty feet thick, on top of which was a grand 
boulevard for chariots. Riding in vehicles drawn by 
horses on this elevated road persons could view the stu- 
pendous structures of the city, as, for example, the 
hanging gardens or the temple. The hanging gardens 
consisted of long and broad platforms, one above the 
other, supported on pillars and covered with earth — 
flowers, shrubs, and trees growing on the same. Each 
succeeding platform was smaller than the one below it, 
so that the whole presented somewhat the shape of a 
truncated wedge. We can well imagine what must have 



DESIRE 275 

been the appearance, from the walls, of these platforms 
bearing their verdure and blossoms. But a still more 
imposing structure rose from a platform in the midst 
of the city, which was itself seventy-five feet high — the 
great temple. It consisted of seven edifices, each of one 
story, each succeeding one smaller and resting on the 
flat roof of the one below it, each a different color than 
the others, the uppermost one gold. We are to remem- 
ber that the dress and utensils of the Babylonians were 
equally luxurious with their buildings, whence we under- 
stand what were their means of satisfying desire. 

Nineveh was the seat of artistic excellence. The pub- 
lic buildings, which were huge and rose one on top of 
another, had wainscoting of alabaster, upon which were 
highly wrought sculptures. The chairs, tables, and 
stools of the Ninevites were about such as we possess 
to-day, ours often being copied from theirs. The Nin- 
evites made use even of face-powder and perfumery, 
so great was their luxury. It should seem also that we 
have derived embroidery from them. With the needle 
they worked on cloth the forms of rosettes, of flowers, 
and of animals, the latter sometimes being representa- 
tive of real, sometimes of fictitious ones. Just what were 
the patterns of these embroideries is known to us, since, 
on the wainscoting, sculptures of the dress of men show 
how the cloth was wrought on; the sculptured thresh- 
olds of the palaces also give us an idea of the same. 
The corribs of the Ninevites, together with their brace- 
lets, ear-rings, and necklaces, have come down to us, 
showing us their skill in designing. 

Tyre and Sidon exhibit a people devoted to manu- 
facture and commerce, a people who thrived through 



276 DESIRE 

specialization. They made a profit on everything which 
they made, a profit, indeed, on what they had not made. 
They were the first people to discover that work is un- 
necessary. They produced nothing, but secured a profit 
on what others produced. They fitted out ships, which 
they moved over the sea by means of rows of men who 
sat on benches, whence called rowers. They went a 
thousand miles or more, establishing stations and ware- 
houses where they might exchange the goods which 
they brought for others which they might carry away, 
always managing to get the best of the bargain. The 
goods which they took away, if they did not wish to 
use them themselves, they sold at advantage. They had 
a knowledge of all the inventions and receipts of the 
past, to which they added a few of their own. They 
even entered the undertaking business, making coffins 
of stone, of wood, of earthenware, and even of lead 
to sell. 

Judea presented a people who from being shepherds 
had become farmers, engaging latterly, to be sure, in 
manufacture and commerce. The Jews thought to ren- 
der easier the satisfaction of desire by limiting the title 
to land. Every fifty years horns were to be blown all 
over the country, signifying that the grand year of 
jubilee had come, then anybody who during the last fifty 
years had sold land was to get it back again for nothing. 
Anyone buying land, therefore, really would only pay 
cash rent for it as many years as were to expire till the 
jubilee came. The doctrine of this usage was that no- 
body should ultimately alienate himself from the land. 
Another provision somewhat along the same line was 
that every seventh year those who owned land were not 



to work it, but to give up its use to the poor. Those Jews 
who had sold themselves into bondage were also to be 
free after the expiration of a certain time, and debts 
were to be subject to the statute of limitation. Such, 
indeed, were the proposed Jewish regulations, though 
doubt exists as to whether they were ever generally car- 
ried out. At any rate, however, they serve to show the 
natural progress of mankind toward the satisfaction of 
desire. 

Persia, a small country on the gulf of kindred name, 
annexing territory after territory, welded together into 
a single empire Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Phoenicia, 
Judea, and all the other countries between the Helles- 
pont and the Indus. This empire exhibited in a way all 
the characteristics which those countries had manifested, 
and in addition a splendid organization. The Persian 
empire was three thousand miles long and from five 
hundred to fifteen hundred broad, and contained two 
million square miles, eighty million inhabitants, sixty 
nations. The Persians made roads through this empire 
over which couriers rode on fleet horses carrying the 
mails. Uniform coinage was adopted, an army and a 
navy created. 

This great empire was evolved out of nations which 
themselves were evolved out of some state of things 
comparable with what once existed in the Peruvian em- 
pire — not exactly such a state of things as Peru had, 
perhaps, but something equivalent to it. 

From the Persian empire to modern times, more than 
two thousand years, there have existed in succession 
Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Papacy, and Protestancy, 
so many stages of progress in the satisfaction of desire. 



27S DESIRE 

Greece produced Athens, Sparta, and Macedonia. 
Athens had a great navy and a large merchant marine, 
and carried on an extensive commerce, besides devoting 
itself to manufacture. It extended its empire over four 
hundred cities, everywhere building up democracy. The 
Athenians had their work all done for them by slaves, 
and devoted themselves to politics and letters. It may 
be doubted whether any other people ever had such an 
easy and delightful time. Sparta was a socialistic re- 
public, so far as citizenship was concerned, the labor, 
however, being performed by slaves with no voice in 
affairs. The people were required to eat at public tables, 
where the fare was plain and the whole life of the citizen 
was removed as far as possible from luxury. He, 
indeed, did not have to work, but must prepare himself 
for the life of a soldier and serve in the army, in which 
capacity he was very successful. Macedonia, owing to 
the conquest of Athens by Sparta and the downfall of 
Thebes, a fourth great power of the Greeks, became the 
head of all Greece, and under Alexander the Great over- 
threw the Persian empire, annexing its territory, this 
being the greatest single conquest ever effected. The 
Greeks now pushed into the Persian territory, absorb- 
ing its treasures and filling positions of power there, 
which advantages, indeed, they continued to enjoy for 
centuries. This conquest of Alexander, then, changed 
the fate of the world, caused enlightened method to be 
introduced into the affairs of men, whereby the satis- 
faction of desire was greatly promoted. 

Rome made the legion its unit of military power, an 
organization which came to consist of six thousand men, 
subdivided and officered somewhat on the plan of a mod- 



DESIRE- 279 

ern army, and having, besides infantry, some cavalry 
and perhaps engines of war. Great armies were merely 
made up of such legions. Whenever a legion stopped 
for the night, the men entrenched themselves and ap- 
pointed guards. They never dispersed about a town, 
but were constantly together and always subject to the 
strictest discipline. They were always ready, day and 
night, in season and out of season, to effect all they 
were capable of. Whatever lands the Roman army 
occupied it held, so that taxes were collected from them 
to fill the coffers. Commerce was also carried on with 
the conquered lands, the inhabitants being allowed to 
retain their liberty and to keep their possessions. Since, 
then, Rome with its machine of power kept adding on 
land after land, it came to hold sway from the Thames 
to the Euphrates. There was unity of administration, 
the senate directing and the consul or general executing, 
a dictator with absolute power being appointed, if neces- 
sary. A commander came, however, to be chosen, who 
exercised the executive authority somewhat as a modern 
president exercises it, and to whom has been applied, 
perhaps inappropriately, the designation of emperor. 
Of such commanders — emperors, as they have come to 
be called — there were at least forty, counting from and 
including Augustus up to, but excluding, Diocletian. 
Lastly, all questions of rights were decided in courts, 
according to general principles of justice, which the 
Romans have the merit of having worked out. The 
dominion of the Romans was about three thousand miles 
long and fifteen hundred broad, counting at the places 
of greatest extension. One hundred and twenty mill- 
ions of people, it is believed, were found within its 



250 DESIRE 

borders, on which people it enforced its regime for four 
hundred years or more. A hke number of people, it 
seems probable, were never before so well provided for. 

Constantinople was founded by Constantine the Great, 
from whom it got its name, and was made by him the 
seat of an empire which, though it was called Roman, 
was not such in the sense formerly attaching to that 
name. Republican institutions became nominal merely, 
Constantine being legislator, executor, and supreme 
court. He appointed one set of men to the civil, an- 
other to the military service, remaining himself at the 
head of both. As emblematical of the exalted station 
to which he had attained he wore upon his shoulders a 
silk robe gorgeously colored and embroidered with flow- 
ers, upon his head a wig of various colored hair, set off 
with pearls and gems. It would be a great mistake, 
however, to suppose that he ruled merely by caprice. 
The Roman law was that which determined rights be- 
tween man and man, systematized finally into the Code, 
Institutes, and Pandects of Justinian, the source of our 
modern law. Christianity, with its principle of broth- 
erly love, was made the religion of the empire, where- 
upon persecutions and paganism vanished. 

Papacy created two great empires, which existed 
simultaneously — the Mahometan, which for the most 
part was south of the Mediterranean, and the Catholic, 
which was for the most part north of it. The Ma- 
hometan empire was more than thirty-five hundred miles 
long, stretching from France to India. The Caliph was 
the supreme authority, both in religion and in politics. 
What he said had to be done, what he said had to be 
believed; there was, however, more than one chief, each 



DESIRE 281 

supreme within his jurisdiction, particularly the Caliph 
of Bagdad and the Emir of Cordova. All believers 
were nominally alike, equal before God, the same to con- 
science, since each was credited with a like intention. 
Very good laws were enacted, industry of all kinds 
flourished, and there was throughout the empire great 
prosperity, greater perhaps than had ever before existed 
on so large a scale. The Catholic empire extended over 
various kingdoms and republics, some of which were 
changeful. The Pope, with supreme authority in relig- 
ion, assumed authority over governments, the theory 
being that politics should be controlled by religion. 
Outside of towns the feudal organization prevailed, the 
people getting their lands from the lords on condition of 
furnishing supplies and rendering service, the lords get- 
ting the lands from those higher up, and so on. Guilds 
existed which restricted kinds of labor to their orders, 
this enhancing the price. On the whole, it is believed 
that the lot of the average man under papal rule was 
not hard. 

Protestancy, which appeared four hundred years ago, 
extended its empire over the peoples of Europe which 
were of German extraction. If the individual thinks the 
right thing, it is of no consequence that the world thinks 
directly the opposite; he shall prevail against the world. 
For example, it was nothing against the theory of 
Columbus that bodies of men decided it to be chimerical. 
This principle of setting store by the individual gave 
an impulse to progress never before known, allowed 
originality to manifest itself, individual enterprise to 
flourish. 

Thus between the Persian empire and modern times 



282 DESIRE 

intetvened Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Papacy, and 
Protestancy. Greece gave mankind the free use of rea- 
son, Rome showed them how to apply this to practical 
affairs, Constantinople established the reign of abstract 
truth, namely, by legality in the temporal realm, by 
Christianity in the spiritual. Papacy enforced the one- 
ness of humanity, Protestancy its diversity. 

Out of savagery was evolved civilization; out of civ- 
ilization, Persia; out of Persia, Protestancy; out of 
Protestancy, Modernity. 

Modernity makes use of things on the principles of 
their constitution, goes back to the ultimate nature of 
matter and of mind from which to formulate rules for 
the satisfaction of desire. 

This is exhibited in the universality of machinery as 
applied to transportation, to production, and to manu- 
facture. From place to place extend railroads, over 
which are drawn vehicles loaded with passengers and 
freight moved on by the pressure of steam. The nature 
of heat, of mechanics, and of the like inherent in matter, 
is here made use of to supply the place of human labor, 
it being, indeed, a general principle that whether we are 
asleep or awake, alive or dead, matter is always and 
forevermore working in exactly the same way and to 
the same end. Likewise cars propelled by the dynamo 
carry passengers from one place to another with great 
rapidity. Iron roads, with mechanically moved vehicles, 
are doubtless destined to connect all points of importance 
on the land surface of the earth with one another, the re- 
sult being that the earth will practically dwindle to a small 
territory. Wires extend around the globe, and in every 
direction, transmitting intelligence so rapidly that even 



DESIRE 283 

to-day, for purposes of communication, the whole world 
is hardly larger than was once a single town. Produc- 
tion is also effected by machinery rather than by labor. 
Crops are planted, cultivated, and harvested by ma- 
chinery, the grains are threshed and hulled by machin- 
ery. There are machines by which the ground is pre- 
pared for tillage, such as ploughs, harrows, rollers, and 
pulverizers. Machines exist for sowing grain, for drop- 
ping seeds, and for planting tubers, for removing weeds 
from between rows of vegetables, for spraying plants, 
and even for getting insects off them. The harvester, 
as it is called, used for cutting, binding, and windrow- 
ing grain, it is said, enables one man to perform the 
work which formerly required twenty, and not only so, 
but to perform all this work without working at all, he 
having merely to sit upon a seat driving a team. Manu- 
facturing of all kinds is done by machinery, whether in 
the matter of preparing the raw material or in the mat- 
ter of working it up into the finished product. The 
result is that our food, clothes, and dwellings are very 
largely made not by human hands directed by an impulse 
inherent in the mind, but by impersonal mechanisms 
inherent in matter. This is a state of things which did 
not belong to any former time of the world, but is char- 
acteristic of the empire of the present only. Printing 
and writing may also be mentioned as things effected 
by mechanism and greatly distinguishing our time from 
all others. 

Chemistry further exemplifies the use to which we put 
the nature of matter. Thousands of utilities are cheaply 
manufactured by applying one sort of matter to another, 
so that the forces in the one affect those of the other. 



284 DESIRE 

producing the desired product. It is said that there are 
factories in Germany which have perfect laboratories 
and employ a hundred chemists or more constantly to 
investigate the nature of matter with a view to obtain- 
ing useful combinations of it. Explosives of such power 
are now made through chemical agencies as enable the 
intellectual peoples of the earth to control it against any 
possible irruption of barbarians. One regiment of men 
armed in modern fashion, could they overcome the fact 
of time and transfer themselves to the state of Csesar, 
would be able to overthrow the whole Roman empire 
and to dictate any policy they might see fit. 

Going back to the principles of principles, if we may 
so say, is also characteristic of modern life, as, for ex- 
ample, we may observe in the case of finance. We have 
the banking system extended all over the world with 
uniformity of method, a means whereby a person has 
his credit available at a moment's notice in any locality 
and usually without the use of property, whether money 
or goods, the affair being simply one of bookkeeping. 
The banks have deposited in them credits many times 
the whole circulating medium of the world. The stock 
company is another device along the same line, a device 
whereby the possessions of several persons, or such part 
of them as they choose, are converted into a total credit, 
out of which may be paid the expenses of the business, 
the incomes from which accrue to the persons whose 
credit is used. Great businesses are thus reduced to 
bureaucratic management, certain men sitting in an 
office somewhere performing the labor of the world 
without laboring. What is more, the stockholders do 
not even have to sit in an office; the whole thing is done 



DESIRE 285 

for them, and they merely take the returns. These 
results depend in the last resort on what is known as 
invested capital, the return on which is profit, interest, 
and insurance. Credit at interest, even at two per cent., 
will double itself in about a generation. A man with 
a thousand dollars will thus, without doing anything, 
come to have in that time two thousand. Risks to goods 
and life are covered by insurance on the principle of 
general averages, wherefore, if one takes the risks with- 
out having them covered, he also reaps a gain if no dis- 
aster occur. Life insurance is a great modem inven- 
tion whereby by the payment of a stipulated sum each 
year, each quarter, or each month, a person receives a 
certain sum at death or at the expiration of a certain 
time. How these financial institutions give a power to 
modern society which was denied to the past must be 
apparent. 

Education by means of the school, the newspaper, and 
the library also distinguishes modern from former times. 
Schools are now characterized by teaching based on a 
thorough investigation of mind as it has appeared on 
this earth, by the long time given up to it, and by the 
extent of what is taught. The value of public-school 
property in the United States alone is more than a half 
billion of dollars. More than ten millions of dollars are 
each month paid to teachers. The teachers employed, 
if gotten together, would make a body wellnigh as large 
as Napoleon's grand army. The number of pupils in 
the United States would form a body three times as 
great as Xerxes' host. 

It is proved, just as we should have expected, that the 
industrial productivity of a community increases with 



286 DESIRE 

the rise of its schools, Massachusetts, for example, where 
schools are best, being nearly twice as productive as the 
rest of the country. Among other things, accordingly, 
education may rank as one of the means which has been 
discovered to aid the satisfaction of desire. 

Government through some fixed system of representa- 
tion also characterizes modern times, all countries of 
much importance, with the exception of Russia, of Tur- 
key, and of China, making use of it. The representative 
himself stands for a place, a term, and a party. Such 
a system, unlike any system of other days, enables a 
government to extend over any amount of territory. It 
enables a state to last any length of time. It enables 
the will of the people in the long run to be realized. 

Such, then, is the empire of the present which has 
been evolved out of Protestancy. How much improve- 
ment in the means of satisfying desire has been made 
from the state of the amoeba to ours is manifest, how 
much even from the state of savages to ours. 



CHAPTER XIII 

AFFECTION 

The general law by which affections are regulated 
seems to be that of the mutuality of participation. We 
became enamored of what is connected with our activi- 
ties. This may be observed by examining the three 
principal classes of affections, those for kindred, those 
for friends, and those for things, it being understood 
that by affection is meant the feeling of regard which 
we have either for persons or for things. 

Affections for kindred are conjugal, parental, filial, 
fraternal, and nepotal, it being assumed here that hus- 
band and wife are kindred — for it may be that a better 
designation for these would have been family affections. 

One of the mutualities which bind together husband 
and wife is comradeship, husband and wife being close 
companions in the journey of life. Even the hardships 
which they are called on to endure it is a pleasure to 
remember, just as to the followers- of ^neas it was a 
pleasure to remember how they had been tossed about 
on land and sea. The pleasures which husband and wife 
have had together will seem doubly pleasant on that 
account. Another thing by which husband and wife 
have their feelings for each other heightened is the 
mutuality of possessions. They are in a certain sense 
in a business partnership. The value which there may 

287 



288 AFFECTION 

be in this world's goods is shared mutually by them, 
they form with their children a sort of socialistic com- 
munity. The greatest mutuality subsisting between hus- 
band and wife, however, we may believe, is that of 
parentage. 

Notwithstanding all these mutualities, it is true that 
conjugal affection does not always exist. We must sup- 
pose that in such cases the mutuality of participation 
which would make for affection is offset by something 
else. Husband and wife may not be companionable, 
their possessions may not be mutually shared, their 
parentage may be unhappy. 

After thirty-three years of married life, Cicero was 
divorced from Terentia. The reasons which he assigns 
for this, in a letter which is still extant, are that she 
was intriguing, perfidious, and extravagant. We have 
here only another way of his saying that the concerns 
of himself and his wife were not one, there was not a 
mutuality of interests. 

Had Terentia left her memoirs, we should have had 
some light thrown on the subject of matrimony, as, 
according to tradition, she not only married Sallust, 
the historian, but two other husbands besides. If the 
account is true, she has the honor of having been the 
wife of the greatest literary man who ever lived and also 
the wife of another literary man whose eminence was 
great. She is said to have attained the age of one hun- 
dred and three years, to have seen the men of Cicero's 
day pass from view and a succeeding generation come 
to power. 

Her last husband boasted, it is said, that he had two 
things which belonged respectively to the two greatest 



AFFECTION 289 

men of the previous age, Cicero's wife and Caesar's 
chair. 

Parental affection is grounded on the law of mutual- 
ity of participation. The fact that a child is associated 
with his parents for so long a time is certainly one of 
the reasons why an affection exists for him on the part 
of the parents. Another reason is the multitude of de- 
tails and complexity of details in which the child is 
associated with the parent. Greater, perhaps, may be 
some important matter of mutual participation, some 
passage of a crisis — for instance, a recovery on the part 
of the child from a severe illness through the watchful 
care of the parents. 

We can, therefore, well understand why paternal 
affection should be strong enough to prevail even when 
the child has committed misdeeds or is ungrateful. To 
this day a tomb is pointed out which, according to tra- 
dition, is that of the ill-fated and misguided Absalom. 
David mourned bitterly for him and, as is supposed, 
built him this monument which should make known his 
affection to all futurity. 

Cicero's Tullia affords the best example of a father's 
regard on record. For in her case there was nothing 
which might prevent affection, everything which might 
further it. She was the delightful companion of her 
father, one of the most accomplished of Roman ladies, 
but died at thirty-two. At the house of Atticus, Cicero 
read everything which he could find on the subject of 
assuaging grief, and wrote afterward his essay on 
Consolation, which unfortunately is lost. Philosophers 
came to comfort him and men high in public life wrote 
him letters of condolence, among them even Julius 



290 AFFECTION 

Csfesar himself, so that Tulha went down in such mourn- 
ful solicitude as has been vouchsafed to no other human 
being. Cicero retired to Astura, where in the thickest 
of the woods he hid himself, staying there from early 
morn till dewy eve, reading as best he could, but fre- 
quently blinded with tears. 

Rhodiginus declares that hundreds of years afterward, 
in the days of the popes, the body of Tullia was found, 
partially embalmed, it would appear, and the hair dressed 
up in a golden network, but that on exposure the body 
crumbled to dust. 

Cicero, indeed, contemplated building a monument to 
her which should perpetuate his affection for her to the 
remotest ages, but for reasons which we do not alto- 
gether understand was prevented from so doing, yet, 
though he built it not, he builded better than he knew. 
For his mention of the monument has ridden safely over 
the billows of time to us and is more effective than the 
monument itself could possibly have been, while, more- 
over, it is eternal and unchangeable. 

Filial affection, it is easy to understand, is not likely 
to be as strong as parental affection, because the child 
cannot be as conscious as his parents of participation 
with them in the things which have chiefly concerned 
him. Parents there are, and many of them too, who 
show a much deeper regard for their children when little 
than when grown, another reason why the children lose 
affection for their parents. Parents, moreover, have the 
tendency to exercise over their children a mental tyranny 
which is not conducive to affection on the part of the 
child. 

Yet there are remarkable instances of filial affection, 



AFFECTION 29 1 

the most remarkable on record probably being that of 
Alexander Pope, the poet. He tenderly cared for his 
mother till she passed away at the age of ninety-three. 
He had a sketch drawn of her after death, so that her 
looks have descended to us. Six men of humble station 
bore her remains to their resting-place in Twickenham 
church, followed by as many women of like degree, all 
dressed in gray. Pope directed that his own interment 
should be similar, for he would not have it more osten- 
tatious than that of his beloved mother. He placed an 
obelisk in his garden, on which he had inscribed in 
Latin, " Ah ! Edith, best of women, most loving of 
mothers, fare thee well ! " This obelisk is preserved to 
this day at Gopsail, Leicestershire, where it was taken 
from Twickenham — seems likely, indeed, to render the 
record of the son's affection for his mother everlasting. 

Fraternal affection also springs from mutual partici- 
pation, the children of the same family have regard for 
one another owing to the fact that they have so many 
common associations. Certain limits, however, to this 
affection are noticeable. The unfairness with which 
parents deal with their children, giving one an undue 
advantage to the detriment of another, is a great bar 
to it. The great differences of disposition which chil- 
dren of the same family manifest is a great bar to it. 
The great changes that fortune makes, raising one and 
lowering another, is a great bar to it. 

We have, nevertheless, from fiction the example of 
Antigone, who willingly lost her own life to prevent 
the desecration of the body of her deceased brother. 

The popularity of the play of Sophocles, in which this 
is set forth, must in part be ascribed to the hold which 



292 AFFECTION 

fraternal afifection had on the Athenians. Even in late 
years, and here in America, the play has been acted in 
the original Greek, and with costumes and accompani- 
ments reproducing as nearly as possible those of the 
Athenian stage, and even on an American audience the 
effect was profound. 

Charles Lamb, we know, tenderly cared for his sister, 
who at times lost her reason. He is admired for his 
writing, but perhaps not less for this affection. 

Artemisia, Queen of Caria, however, has shown the 
most remarkable regard for a brother which the annals 
of time furnish. She invited the most celebrated ora- 
tors to compose in competition a funeral oration on him, 
the choice falling on that of Theopompus, now regret- 
tably lost. She built such an elaborate and imposing 
mansion of a tomb for him that it has given its name 
to all similar structures among us — mausoleum, from his 
name, Mausoleus. Though long ago wrecked, first by 
an earthquake and latterly by a crusade, its memory is 
yet preserved in its name, a proof that words are the 
only things which last forever. Fragments of the monu- 
ment are in the museum at London, where they yet 
recall the affection of Artemisia for her brother. It was 
known as one of the seven wonders of the world, and 
the description of it by Pliny is extant. Lately, too, the 
site of it has been unearthed, whence restorations have 
appeared. Thus the renown of Artemisia goes on. 

Nepotal affection is a designation which may be used 
to denote affection between relatives outside the imme- 
diate family. The relation of nephews or nieces to 
uncles or aunts differs very essentially from that of chil- 
dren to their parents or from that of children to one 



AFFECTION 293 

another, whence certain sources of affection which exist 
within the immediate family circle will be wanting out- 
side of it. It would be a great mistake, however, not 
to perceive that there is also a certain gain in this. For 
most of the things which will lead to the estrangement 
of children from their parents or of children from one 
another are absent in the case of more distant relatives. 
The affection subsisting between such relatives is more 
of the nature of friendship, with this important differ- 
ence, that the consanguinity is a means of approach. 
We have explained, then, the undying affection which 
has often sprung up between aunts and nephews, be-_ 
tween uncles and nieces. 

Pliny the younger was the nephew of that Pliny who 
wrote the " Natural History " still enjoyed by us, and 
was kindly cared for by him. The younger Pliny be- 
came himself a great writer, and has left us an account 
of the death of his uncle at Vesuvius. We can well 
imagine what affection the young man must have enter- 
tained for the uncle. 

The word nepotal, it will be observed, properly de- 
notes the affections subsisting between those not of the 
same immediate family, since the relationship between 
them arises from the fact that they are grandsons or 
granddaughters. One is a nephew, for instance, because 
he is a grandson, a cousin because he is a grandson, 
and so on. 

Affection for others than those of one's own family 
is usually known as friendship. 

Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, who lived to 
such an advanced age and wrote so many things which 
have perished, or at least are supposed to have perished, 



294 AFFECTION 

wrote, among other things — which, too, is now lost — an 
essay on friendship. Cicero was famihar with this, and 
it was doubtless on the basis of it that he wrote out his 
own well-known tract which everybody reads. Friend- 
ship depends on persons having something in common, 
indeed, on their having much in common. He who 
looks into the face of a friend, says Cicero, beholds 
there, as it were, a copy of himself, for which reason it 
is that friendship is the most delightful of all things. 
Ennius, the old Roman poet, as quoted by Cicero, says 
in certain of his verses, which have outlasted Rome 
itself : " How can life be worth living if devoid of the 
calm trust reposed by friend in friend?" Cicero tells 
how, in a play of Pacuvius, when it was acted, Pylades 
and his friend Orestes were presented as each desiring 
to die for the other, the spectators roundly applauding, 
showing what appreciation they had of friendship. Are 
we charmed with office, fame, architecture, dress, and 
genteel appearance, says Cicero, and not with a mind 
endowed with virtue? Who would want wealth, says 
he, without friends? Friends, he declares, are the most 
beautiful and best furniture of life. Archytas, it is 
said, remarked that if one had ascended into the heavens 
and had become possessed of all their secrets, he would 
yet not enjoy his knowledge very much unless he could 
communicate it to others. Cicero's contention that simi- 
larity of traits is the great bond between friends is but 
another statement of the law of mutuality of participa- 
tion. The friends of our earlier life, he reminds us, are 
not likely to continue such, because our interests and 
theirs as we come to maturity are likely to diverge. 
This is, in fact, but saying that community of interests. 



AFFECTION 295 

tastes, or something of the sort, is the basis of friend- 
ship. He quotes the saying of Aristotle, which indeed 
must have been old when Aristotle was born, that many 
pecks of salt must be eaten together to bring friendship 
to perfection. Friends would have to dine together 
months, it is presumed, to use up so much as one cellar 
of salt, a whole year perhaps to use up a gill of it — but 
in a peck are sixty- four gills ! The statement, therefore, 
is an hyperbole, a way of saying that long and intimate 
association is favorable to friendship. This community 
of association merely, does in fact count for something, 
yet its effect must be very limited without similar dis- 
positions obtain in the persons associating. Cicero well 
remarks that friendship is rare among those in public 
office and concerned in the affairs of state. For who 
is there, says he, who prefers his friend's promotion to 
his own? Those who are prosperous, says he, despise 
the friends of their former condition, as they also de- 
spise those who, from having been prosperous, have 
fallen into adversity. Many things, then, there are 
which may break up friendships — rivalry, neglect, what 
not — the reason, doubtless, why so few friendships exist. 
One of the most common obstacles to friendship is, 
according to Cicero, the demand of one person of an- 
other to do something questionable, nearly everybody 
having some regard for truth and right. He mentions, 
however, the case of Blossius, who was an exception to 
the rule. Tiberius Gracchus was endeavoring to exer- 
cise in behalf of the people dictatorial power, in the 
doing of which he was violently opposed by the senate. 
Blossius, his friend, however, stuck to him. Asked if 
he would have set fire to the capitol if Tiberius Gracchus 



296 AFFECTION 

had told him to do so, he rephed that he would. Regard 
for truth and right, however, has in general such a deep 
lodgment in the human breast that it has passed into a 
proverb that there can be no friendship among the bad. 
This, however, is not an exception to the principle that 
friendship rests on community of mind, seeing that on 
matters of baseness people can seldom agree. Partici- 
pation in good character, Cicero has it, is such a firm 
basis for friendship that divergence of mind in certain 
other particulars is not important. A failure to do 
kindly offices or even reproving a friend may not, he 
thinks, be fatal to friendship if the one or the other 
spring from a virtuous regard. Persons, firm, steadfast, 
and self-consistent, he says, are those whom we should 
choose for friends, this, however, involving the difficulty 
that there is a lack of such persons. Cicero makes 
Scipio, the same who defeated Hannibal at Zama, say 
that we should at least give as much attention to the 
choice of friends as we give to the choice of horses. 

About nineteen hundred years after Cicero finished his 
essay on friendship, Emerson wrote one on the same 
subject. It is interesting, therefore, to observe that, 
though Emerson thought out things for himself and was 
not guided solely by authority, he yet makes friendship, 
as does Cicero, turn on mutuality. He who hears and 
understands me, says Emerson, becomes mine. A man 
may have all the thought and eloquence conceivable yet 
be unable to converse with his cousin or his uncle, un- 
less, indeed, these be kindred souls. We have explained 
why the intellectual and active powers increase with 
affection as they do, since we know that a man can 
write to a friend what he otherwise could not think of, 



AFFECTION 297 

can speak to a friend what he otherwise could not say. 
When we can indulge our affection, says Emerson, the 
preceding eternity vanishes, all things begin de novo, 
we suddenly awaken, as it were, to life. If a soul might 
be assured that somewhere in the universe it should 
regain its friend, says he, it would be content and cheer- 
ful alone for a thousand years to come. A friend, de- 
clares Emerson, is one with whom I can be sincere, that 
is to say, one with whom I can be myself, one with 
whom I do not have to appear other than I am. Every- 
body, when alone, says he, is sincere; he becomes insin- 
cere only when a second person enters. The need of 
mutuality, he thinks, explains why conversation is best 
between two persons only. Three cannot take part in 
it. We have suggested the dinner-parties, where there 
is an effort made to please everybody, to reduce all as 
much as possible to one mind, to suppress every appear- 
ance of individuality. That man, said a host, I cannot 
have at my parties, he does not agree to the opinions 
of some present, he argues a point. The host, in fact, 
seems to be a man whose business it is to see that no- 
body enjoys himself, whose business it is to curb the 
spontaneity of thought, or at least to stop its expression. 
The only fault of the host, however, is that he endeavors 
to insure a mutuality where none is possible; he is right 
enough in his purpose. We expect much of a stranger, 
says Emerson, but as soon as he begins to intrude his 
partialities, his definitions, his defects into the conver- 
sation, it is all over, the want of mutuality is apparent. 
Moreover, it is necessary that the mutuality be real, and 
not feigned. A friend, says Emerson, must be himself 
— he is mine only to the extent that he is not mine. This 



298 AFFECTION 

explains why self-possession is a necessary attribute of 
one in whom we put confidence. If we perceive that he 
is not at ease, we infer that his mind and ours are not 
in harmony. Where there are friends, says Emerson, 
each must stand for the whole world. The only way to 
be a friend, he teaches, is to be one, discover in another 
the mutual requisite. We cannot get nearer to a man 
by getting into his house, but only by getting into his 
heart. It is of no avail to know his mother, his brothers, 
or his sisters. After all, Emerson thinks, friendship is 
at best but a matter of approximation, something like 
the value of tt or e, or the square root of 2. All asso- 
ciation, he says, has to be a compromise. Our ideals 
of friendship, he thinks, are dreams and fables, some- 
thing that we might hope to have realized. We may, 
indeed, conceive that in the depths of the milky way 
are worlds on which all that might be desired or con- 
ceived of in a friend actually exists. 

Of an opposite nature to friendship is malevolence, 
examples of which are anger, hatred, revenge, contempt, 
envy, and jealousy. The case of Achilles well illustrates 
anger. Incensed at Agamemnon on account of the 
injustice which Agamemnon had inflicted on him, he 
refused longer to take part in the operations connected 
with the siege of Troy, the consequence being that the 
Greeks were overwhelmed with defeat. Agamemnon 
prayed his forgiveness and begged him again to lead the 
Greeks, offering him great rewards, whereupon Achilles 
merely replied that, even if the gifts were fabulous be- 
yond measure, yet should his resentment remain, he 
would let the Greeks perish to the last man rather than 
lift a finger to help them. Examples like this may yet 



AFFECTION 299 

be found, and almost anywhere. An illustration of 
hatred is that recorded by Xenophon. Cyrus the younger 
exceedingly despised his brother Artaxerxes, who was 
King of Persia. Having raised an insurrection against 
him and penetrated with his army wellnigh to Babylon, 
the capital, he was engaging the king's forces with 
every prospect of success at Cunaxa, when, spying his 
brother among the Persians, he could not restrain him- 
self, but, crying out, " I see the man," rushed upon him 
with his few attendants, thereby losing his own life and 
destroying all chance of success. It may be doubted 
whether this, also, is any uncommon example of the 
display of hatred. Revenge shows itself in many in- 
stances, yea, in instances innumerable. Not having been 
appointed to an office, which he coveted, by the president, 
the applicant inflicted, when opportunity offered, a mor- 
tal wound on the president, exceeding the injury which 
the president had done him — if, indeed, injury it could 
be called — infinitely. Something of the sort, but on a 
smaller scale, may be observed in country precincts when 
an election is in progress. It is nothing to the one 
who scratches the ballot that the candidate is good and 
capable, so sweet to him is his revenge. Contempt, as 
is known, arises out of the undue importance which one 
attaches to himself. This, indeed, may go so far that 
he attaches an importance to the opinions of others on 
the ground of their falsity; he may desire persons to 
consider him meritorious, even when he knows himself 
not to be so. Of jealousy Othello furnishes the stand- 
ing example. The man has come to the pass that he 
believes another person to be his absolute possession. 
She should not dare even to put in a claim to her own 



300 AFFECTION 

soul. His position is, indeed, so ridiculous that he is 
made the victim of plots and deep-laid schemes on the 
part of lago, he even goes to the extent of committing 
murder — indeed, takes the life of his wife on the ground 
that he adores her. The nature of jealousy, then, is that 
the mind is pained to have its possession, or at least its 
supposed possession, contribute even in the most trivial 
manner to the advantage or pleasure of another. Envy 
is the pain which one feels in the happiness or good 
fortune of another, usually in the happiness or good 
fortune of one of his own class. Beggars, it is said, 
have no envy of those in affluence, but only of their 
fellow beggars who may be a little better off than them- 
selves, of a fellow beggar, for example, who may chance 
to have a better pair of shoes than any of the rest pos- 
sesses. Envy leads to detraction, the envious person 
representing that the object of his envy does not know 
as much as he thinks he knows, or perhaps as much as 
some others think he knows, that he has not as many 
possessions as he appears to have, that he does not man- 
age his affairs as well as he might, although all this in 
no way concerns the man who is envious of him. The 
envious man looks after the affairs of others for noth- 
ing, even to his own detriment perhaps. Often an 
envious man will miss no chance to browbeat one by 
unpleasant allusion or question, as, " That was a pretty 
bad bargain you made in buying that house," or " What 
do you suppose I heard a person remark about your 
speech last night ? " 

The question has often been raised, what can be the 
natural purpose of such affections as envy, jealousy, 
and the like, or if they have no natural purpose, whence 
then their origin? 



AFFECTION 3OI 

An hypothesis may be ventured whether they are not 
to be accounted for somewhat as are the monsters of 
bygone ages. Once on the earth, as we know, were 
gigantic hzards, some fifteen feet in height, some sixty 
feet long, some, indeed, with jaws not less than twenty 
feet in length, some with eyes fully two feet in diameter. 
They are to be explained on the ground that the condi- 
tions of the earth were once favorable to their evolution, 
conditions which no longer obtain. May it not be that 
envy, jealousy, and revenge, and, in a large measure, 
contempt, anger, and hatred, are monsters of human 
feeling which certain conditions have developed, but 
which, with those conditions ceasing, are destined to 
extinction ? 

As we look on a picture representing a giant lizard 
of the past, with its huge tail, huge neck, and still huger 
body, large eye and small brain, we shall perhaps be 
unable to keep from laughing. If we accept the doc- 
trine of Schelling that all animal life is an attempt to 
reach rationality full and complete, our laughter will be 
uproarious. These animals were the attempt to get at 
something in the wrong way. 

It is not necessary to suppose that future ages will 
attach the same importance to the characterization of 
Othello that the Elizabethans did, the conditions pro- 
ducing jealousy ceasing, jealousy itself will cease. 

We have the cases of parents who will not allow some 
of their children to have the delicacies which they per- 
mit their other children to share, a circumstance which 
occasions much bad feeling. States of society in which 
discrimination, and on trivial grounds, is made in 
favor of one to the detriment of another would, we may 



302 AFFECTION 

suppose, have the tendency to produce just such feelings 
as anger, hatred, revenge, contempt, envy, and jealousy, 
the which conditions passing away, these feelings will 
likewise cease. 

When the waste lands of the earth have been taken 
up and the resources of the earth have been developed, 
when migration has ceased, when people are compelled to 
make the place in which they live a desirable one in- 
stead of fleeing to another, then we may expect that 
these juster conditions will prevail. 

Affections not for persons are those for animals, and 
plants, and inanimate things. 

Alexander the Great, we are told, persuaded his 
father, Philip, of whom everybody has heard, to buy a 
certain refractory horse for him, having himself broken 
in the animal, which was the condition set. The horse, 
in fact, would never allow anybody but Alexander to 
ride him, if we may believe the historians. The cost 
of this horse was something like twenty thousand dol- 
lars, but it appears that he was worth as much as that 
— indeed, a great deal more. For it is remarkable that 
this horse, called Bucephalus, was the companion of 
Alexander nearly all the rest of his life and made the 
conquest of Asia with him, taking part in all the bat- 
tles, including that of Arbela, This faithful horse 
finally died in India on the bank of the river known as 
Jhylum, where his body was buried. Alexander founded 
a town there, calling it Bucephalia, as a monument to 
his horse, and a town supposed to be on the same spot 
is still pointed out. 

What, then, must have been the feeling of Alexander 
for the horse when he witnessed the interment of its 



AFFECTION 303 

body we can well conceive. As he stood at the grave 
of the horse, memories of his youth must have crowded 
upon him — how he had recited when a boy in the pres- 
ence of Demosthenes himself, how he had been instructed 
by Aristotle, how his mother had been separated from 
his father, how he had himself, in behalf of his mother, 
quarreled with his father, how at the wedding feast of 
his sister his father had been assassinated, how he had 
himself since overcome the world, undergoing untold 
hardships and dangers. 

The bodies of cats and the bodies of birds are found 
embalmed in Egypt, which, it seems, were there in their 
coffins when the Israelites were making their exodus, 
animals which the Egyptians remembered with the ten- 
derest affection. 

It is rehearsed by a man that his parents had, during 
his stay at home, one dog after another, seven in all, 
and that he has a distinct recollection of each that he 
shall always cherish. Though fond of all these dogs, 
he yet professed a preference for the sixth one. Jack, 
which, he says, he hopes to meet in the paradise to come. 
Of the first cat which he remembers his parents to have 
had, the name of which was Dill, he is still able to give 
a description — remembers, indeed, how he once thought- 
lessly put her in the oven. 

There are few persons probably who cannot relate 
something similar, and the fact that they can do so 
shows the interest which they take in household animals. 

We have all heard of the man who had his whole 
life transformed by the affection which he formed for 
a flower which grew in a pot in his prison. 

The Dutch had, and still have, a great fondness for 



304 AFFECTION 

tulips, which grow in their gardens, just as many a one 
among us has a fondness for some particular flower 
which he cultivates. 

What is called the tulip mania had its origin in this 
regard for flowers. Tulips in Holland became an object 
of speculation, much as pork, wheat, and corn, or even 
stocks have become objects of speculation with us. 
Extraordinary prices were paid for tulips. For exam- 
ple, for one root of a tulip a man gave twelve acres of 
land, not, indeed, that this was the price which he set 
on his affection for it, but that he hoped to sell it at a 
still higher price. The very fact, however, that tulips 
could be made objects of speculation proves that they 
must have been in demand. Even in the nineteenth 
century, it is said, a tulip bulb brought upward of fifteen 
hundred dollars. 

Our affection for places is very marked, particularly 
affection for home or country. 

What a certain man once remarked is doubtless that 
to which everybody will assent, namely, that there is 
no other spot on the whole earth which has the same 
significance to a man as that where he spent his child- 
hood and youth. The geography of it means more to 
him than the geography of all lands besides. 

The house in which George Washington's parents 
lived, and in which he was born, stood on the south 
bank of the Potomac, Virginia, such a primitive house 
as we have often seen, having huge chimneys on the 
outside and the roof twice as long on one side as on 
the other. 

Custis, son of Martha Washington, 181 5, had loaded 
on a boat at Alexandria, Virginia, a piece of marble 



AFFECTION 305 

wrapped in an American flag, which he transported to 
the place where the old house had stood, the house itself 
having been destroyed eighty years previously. Out of 
bricks which had belonged to one of the chimneys he 
laid a foundation, upon which he placed the marble to 
mark the site of Washington's old home. 

Years afterward, the historian Lossing came to the 
spot, finding the stone of Custis broken and around it, 
and even over it, growing vines, briers, and weeds. He 
could perceive here and there a stunted cedar sapling and 
shrubs of figs, descendants no doubt of trees which stood 
there when Washington was a boy. 

Sherman, who had made his famous march to the sea, 
came to the place, 1878, and beheld one of the old chim- 
neys of the house still standing. 

What happened in the case of Washington is that 
which has happened in the case of us all. Any one of 
us may go to another state, province, or country, and 
there perhaps find the remains of an old cellar in the 
midst of brush over which once stood the house of his 
great-grandfather. Some old pear-trees, even, may yet 
be standing near the spot. 

We have all realized the truth of the poet's portrayal 
of a sentiment in which we all participate more or less : 

" Long years have past and I behold 
My father's elms and mansions old, 
The brook's bright wave, — 
But ah ! the scenes which fancy drew 
Deceived my heart, the friends I knew, 
Are sleeping now beneath the yew, 
Low in the grave." 

Not very far from the site of the old house in which 
Washington was born is a vault, surrounded with shrub- 



306 AFFECTION 

b^ry, wherein repose the bodies of his father and kin- 
dred. How different is the scene which one now wit- 
nesses on visiting the place from the scene it presented 
to the childhood of the man whom we have all come 
to honor! 

We have an affection for distinguished places in our 
own country, and even for such places in any country, 
as, for example, for Jamestown, for Plymouth, for 
Winchester, for Rome, for Troy, for Tyre, for Baby- 
lon, and for Memphis. 

Jamestown may be considered as the first capital of 
America, where even to-day the remnant of the old 
church tower is descried in the midst of trees and 
shrubs, and round which are the graves of the early 
settlers. 

When we think of this great republic, whose domin- 
ions extend beyond the setting sun and into the region 
of to-morrow, shall we not feel affection for the spot? 

Winchester, of Hampshire, may be regarded as the 
first capital of Anglo-Saxondom, Winchester having 
been seized by Cerdic fourteen hundred years ago. 

The state which the Saxons founded in Hampshire, 
together with the states derived from it and the states 
subject to Anglo-Saxon rule, now cover a quarter of 
the land surface of the globe. 

It is not, therefore, without affection that we shall 
regard Winchester, from which all this result has come. 

Places connected with religion are objects of affec- 
tion, as Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the literal meaning of 
which is Peaceville, we understand was a city before the 
Jews conquered Palestine. For, strange as it may seem, 
letters or copies of such from a ruler of Jerusalem to a 



AFFECTION 307 

king of Egypt, antedating Joshua, have in our day been 
discovered. When these letters were written, all the 
matters which have since given distinction to Jerusalem 
were existent potentially only. None of our Bible had 
as then been written. Jerusalem we are informed was 
taken by David and on what was the thrashing-floor of 
Araunah Solomon built the temple, the corner stones of 
which are still pointed out. The Jews have such an 
affection for the place that they meet there every day to 
wail, mourning the downfall of their empire. All Chris- 
tians and all Mahometans as well join in their affection 
for Jerusalem, particularly all Christians, their regard for 
it not being exceeded by that of the Jews themselves, 
\vhence it is that they fervently chant — 

" Glorious things of thee are spoken, 
Zion, city of our God, 
He whose word cannot be broken, 
Formed thee for his own abode." 

Places connected with the progress of knowledge are 
endeared to us. Columbus seeking the aid of Spain to 
make his voyage of discovery stopped at the convent of 
La Rabida to beg bread for his son, he who had in his 
head an idea which was worth more than all Europe. 
The good priest of that place gave him help in his project 
which enabled him to carry it out. So much affection, 
therefore, does the world feel for the place that four 
hundred years afterwards an exact copy of the convent 
is erected on the shore of Lake Michigan in commem- 
oration of the fact. 

About fifteen miles west of Genoa, Italy, is the village 
of Cogoleto, containing about twenty-four hundred in- 



308 AFFECTION 

habitants, the place where Columbus is reputed to have 
been born. The house which is regarded as his birth- 
place is now a shop, but bears an inscription. 

Genoa, where Columbus lived, has, however, a monu- 
ment to him in a public place, the monument being a 
statue resting on an anchor and upon a pedestal set off 
with the prows of ships, at the feet of the statue a figure 
of America kneeling, besides allegorical figures, one of 
which is Geography. 

There is no American probably who would not like to 
make a journey, if not to Genoa, at least to the little 
town of Cogoleto, so much affection does he entertain 
for the places connected with this greatest of geographical 
discoverers. 

We have in like manner an affection for relics whether 
ancestral, or historical, or biological, or mineralogical. 

There are few people who have not some keepsakes, 
as the same are called, which they highly value, these 
having once belonged to their parents or to other mem- 
bers of the family. 

A man, for example, has an old spinning-wheel which 
he remembers to have seen his mother use. She had 
rolls of wool laid in a pile, taking up one of which, she 
would fasten it to a piece of yarn which was wound 
around the spindle, then stepping backward and holding 
the roll in one hand, she would give the large wheel a 
turn with the other. The spindle was thus whirled rap- 
idly around and the roll twisted into yarn. The 
machinery of our times has done away with the use of 
the spinning-wheel, yet the man greatly prizes it, because 
his mother used it and because perhaps it stands for a 
state of things which has passed away. 



AFFECTION 3O9 

For similar reasons, one keeps old chairs, tables, and 
bedsteads, dishes, knives and forks, watches and clocks, 
nay, what not? The older a family relic is, usually the 
more it is treasured, a snuff-box, for example, which 
belonged to one's great-grandmother. 

Of historical relics the number is truly great, as one 
well knows who has visited museums. 

Guericke, who discovered how to make the air-pump 
at Magdeburg, in order to show its workings had two 
hollow half spheres which fitted together, the air being 
exhausted from which they could not easily be pulled 
apart. Indeed, he caused fifteen horses to be hitched to 
one of these half spheres and fifteen to the other and 
then let them all pull back to back, as hard as they could 
and yet they could not separate the half spheres from 
each other, though nothing in the world held them 
together but the pressure of the air. So much were these 
half spheres esteemed as relics that to this day they 
have been reverently preserved in the library of Berlin. 
At Magdeburg even pieces of Guericke's house are kept 
as relics. 

On Christmas eve, 1801, Trevithick making use of a 
sort of locomotive gave some persons a ride, the first 
load of passengers, it is said, ever moved by steam, a 
circumstance in which we cannot help but take great 
interest, knowing the use which has since been made of 
steam to transport persons and goods not only from New 
York to San Francisco, but also from Paris to Vladivo- 
stok. Previous to this time, Trevithick had made mod- 
els of locomotives which were moved by steam on a table, 
one of which models is still to be seen at South Kensing- 
ton, an object of the deepest regard. There is also 



3lO AFFECTION 

there a mandrel, weighing half a ton, which Trevithick 
often lifted when he was a youth of eighteen, possessing 
great power of muscle as well as of brain. 

Our affection for biological relics is also strong. For 
example, there once lived a certain animal, sort of baboon 
or perhaps of manlike ape, nobody knows exactly when, 
though a long time ago, his life doubtless precarious 
and his death unmourned, he in fact having no idea of 
his own importance. Lately, however, naturalists found 
in a heap of volcanic ashes in Java, part of his skull, two 
of his teeth, and a thigh bone, when suddenly he became 
an object of affectionate regard and acquired great 
fame, since he is supposed to have filled in some measure 
the office of missing link. 

The bones or fossils of the primitive horse, an animal 
with four toes in front and three behind, and about as 
large as a cat, probably also striped like one of our 
prairie squirrels, have likewise been the objects of 
affection, since from such an animal as this it is supposed 
all our horses have descended, even those which at pres- 
ent trot a mile in two minutes. 

Suetonius, the historian, mentions that Julius Caesar 
possessed a horse which had toes, not dreaming of the 
importance which attached to his statement, since it was 
not till Darwin's time that it was understood that horses 
have descended from toed animals. 

We also form attachments for the minerals and metals 
that are contained in our cabinets. Fragments of 
meteoric stones are met with and are rightly made 
objects of regard. Quartz rocks containing gold are 
also very common in cabinets, enormous pieces of which 
have sometimes been discovered, one it is said that 



AFFECTION 3 1 1 

weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, and many such 
a large piece is contained in some museum to be highly 
treasured. Diamonds, so large as to be worth thousands 
of dollars have been taken from the mines. Of cut 
diamonds indeed there is a great collection at Dresden. 
As, moreover, each kind of rock exhibits a certain kind 
of crystal known among other things by its angle, a col- 
lection of rocks has also on this account an importance 
and, therefore, a claim on our affection. 



CHAPTER XIV 

EMOTION 

The emotions, according to some, are all aesthetic, but 
whether they are so or not, at least aesthetic emotions are 
those that particularly require to be treated of. 

It has been common, moreover, to speak of aesthetic 
emotions as feelings produced either by things sublime 
or by things beautiful, but in truth they are also pro- 
duced by things pathetic, by things ludicrous, by things 
picturesque, and by things wonderful, there being at 
least six classes of them. What we have reason to 
believe, however, is this — the sublime, the pathetic, the 
ludicrous, the beautiful, the picturesque, and the wonder- 
ful are but different forms of unity in variety, this prin- 
ciple, according to Schopenhauer, being the concept re- 
garded as fixed, the many grasped unchangeably in the 
one, whereby, indeed, more unity is, perhaps, ascribed 
to things than they actually possess. 

The sublime may be one of extent merely, in which 
case it is properly spoken of as the extensive sublime, 
though the term mathematical is that which is usually 
employed to designate it. 

Things which awaken in us sublime feelings affect 
us, not by the variety which they contain, but by their 
unity — the unbroken sameness in them swallowing up the 
variety. All the waters of the ocean, for example, are 

312 



EMOTION 313 

nearly alike, it is not their variety, but their sameness 
that delights us, the unity of all the waters, so to say. 

The ocean which appears boundless to the eye, the 
prairies of America, the deserts of Africa produce in us 
feelings of the sublime, as do mountains, the Alps, for 
instance — indeed, any such objects. 

When the question is one of power, however, rather 
than one of extent, the sublime is said to be dynamical. 
Whatever is able, as it were, to unite in itself all power, 
that is to say, to subject to itself, as a unity, all opposing 
forces, is dynamically sublime, as, for example, are 
volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches, floods, and winds. 

An eruption of the volcano, Kilauea, Hawaii, 1840, 
was sublime. Burning lava, red as blood, burst forth 
from that volcano, forming a river of fire that flowed 
forty miles to the sea, half a mile wide, two hundred 
feet deep, irresistible in its fury, heating the water for 
twenty miles along the coast and turning night into day. 
Mauna Loa, on the same island, was a fountain of fire, 
1852, such as artifice has not produced, there issuing 
from it a red-hot column of burning lava to the height 
of seven hundred feet, a thousand feet in diameter. 

Two streams of burning lava burst out of Skapter 
Jocul, Iceland, 1783, which continued to flow for two 
years to the sea, sweeping away in their courses twenty 
villages and nine thousand inhabitants. 

Earthquakes, manifesting, as they do, such gigantic 
power, are well calculated to rouse within us emotions of 
the sublime. The earthquake of Lisbon, 1755, furnishes 
a good example. Within the space of six minutes, 
incredible as it may seem, great fragments were torn off 
mountains and precipitated to the valleys below, the 



314 ■ EMOTION 

waters of the ocean were lifted fifty feet, a great part 
of the city was made a mass of shapeless ruins, and 
thirty thousand people were hurried into eternity. The 
earthquake of Calabria, 1783, is an example — the ground, 
suddenly yawning into great seams, swallowed a hun- 
dred thousand " persons. The earthquake of Caracas, 
1 812, is an example, the city being tumbled into ruins 
in the twinkling of an eye. The earthquake of New 
Madrid, 181 1, may also be cited — the ground suddenly 
lifted the Mississippi River, so that its waters flowed 
backward and over-ran its banks, indeed forming lakes, 
some that were twenty miles in extent. 

When we hear of such things as these, feelings of the 
sublime well up within us, feelings of the dynamic sub- 
lime, as it is called, the sublime of power. 

An Alpine avalanche is sublime, a huge body of ice 
on the summit of a mountain breaking loose, falling 
down the mountain side, taking with it rocks and trees, 
plunging at last headlong into the valley below, crush- 
ing towns, as a pebble might crush an egg-shell. 

The power exerted by water is also sublime, the great 
geyser of Iceland, for example, throws a stream of boil- 
ing water, ten feet in diameter, a hundred feet high and 
that continuously. The waters of Niagara plunge in 
great mass over a rocky wall one hundred and fifty feet 
or more. The strong ocean tide moving with irresisti- 
ble might up the mouths of great rivers, as for example, 
up the mouth of the Ho-hong-ho, meets the hardly less 
strong current of the rivers, causing great columns of 
water to rise high in the air and to rush up stream. 
Near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1889, ^ ^^^e in the 
mountains, having broken over an artificial embank- 



EMOTION 315 

ment, filled the valley below with a mighty flood, bearing 
down all before it — trees, houses, humanity itself. 

These things are sublime because a unity of power, 
great enough to subdue all other varieties is here mani- 
fest. 

Tornadoes, moreover, are sublime, sweeping every- 
thing before them and raising houses and ships into 
the air. 

Furthermore, the sure working of nature's laws by 
which death is a certainty to every creature is sublime, 
this power of death uniting in itself, as it were, all 
others. Sublime, therefore, was the thought of Xerxes, 
when standing on the shore of the Hellespont, he sur- 
veyed the mightiest army ever assembled, five millions 
of men, as some say, sixty different nations each in its 
own garb of war, power enough as he thought to subdue 
the world : 

" Ere a hundred years were finished 

Where would all those myriads be ? 
Hellespont would still be rolling 

His bright waters to the sea, 
But of all those countless numbers 

Not one living could be found, 
A dead host with their dead monarch, 

Silent in the silent ground." 

Besides the extensive sublime and the dynamical sub- 
lime, we have also the moral sublime, that which exem- 
plifies the triumph of right over might through desperate 
human actions. Xerxes with his mighty host, for ex- 
ample, comes to the pass of Thermopylae, there to find 
Leonidas with only three hundred men to dispute his 
passage. " Give up your arms," is the demand of the 



3l6 EMOTION 

Persians, " Come and take them," the reply of the 
Greeks. " Our arrows are so many," say the Persians, 
**' that, when we discharge them, they darken the sun." 
" So much the better," retort the Greeks, " for, then, we 
shall fight in the shade." What could more awaken 
within us the feeling of the sublime, particularly when 
we remember that Greece was the one hope of the world 
for all time to come ? Similarly productive of sublime 
emotions is the meeting of two great armies in deadly 
conflict when some great principle is to be decided, the 
Greeks and Persians at Marathon, the Romans and 
Carthaginians at Zama. 

Another instance of the moral sublime may be men- 
tioned. Napoleon, when his grand army, on its retreat 
from Moscow, had diminished to eleven thousand men, 
without ammunition at that — cold, hungry, and in rags — 
yet to rescue Marshal Ney, turned them back into the 
snows of Russia, despite the countless hosts which the 
Czar could muster against him, an example of what is 
morally sublime. 

When Alexander the Great, with the world at his beck, 
asked Diogenes who had nothing of his own but his tub, 
if he could do anything for him, Diogenes replied that 
it would be an accommodation if Alexander would stand 
to one side a little, so as not to keep from him the direct 
rays of the sun. This also was morally sublime. 

The pathetic, imperfectly treated of by investigators, 
may perhaps receive an explanation, as being an adjunct 
of the sublime. 

All are agreed that pathetic feelings are occasioned 
by what is sad, yet manifestly it is not the sadness as 
such that is pleasurable. What is pleasurable must be 
some aspect of the sad event. 



EMOTION 3 I 7 

Sad things, in so far as they are subHme, may be 
pleasant, notwithstanding that in another respect they 
are unpleasant. Here, perhaps, we have a clue to 
explaining the pathetic. 

Death, for example, an event occupying but a moment 
of time, gathers up into itself the consequences of futu- 
rity, unifies the variety of the years, so to say — whence 
this event is sublime, painful though, in other respects, 
it be. 

Indeed, that there may be pleasure in spite of pain is 
illustrated in the havoc which the eruption of a volcano 
produces. The pleasure is not on account of the havoc 
but in spite of it, no doubt on account of the sublime 
aspect which the volcano manifests. 

What sadness there is in the case of the pathetic, 
moreover, is softened by the consolations of religion. 
For we believe that the death of the person, though from 
one point of view a misfortune, yet in the economy of 
providence is compensated for. 

Furthermore, whatever sadness there may be, since it 
mingles with the pleasure of the sublime, heightens it by 
contrast. 

Actual occurrences that have the power to raise 
pathetic emotions are probably oftener connected with 
the family than with anything else, the death of children 
being one of the sources of the pathetic most noted. 

When we read, for example, in Sterne's sketch of his 
own life how his father's family having removed from 
Bristol to Hampshire, lost there his little brother, "Poor 
Jothram," as he calls him, " a pretty boy four years old," 
there wells up within us the feeling in question. 

The state of the poor boy, so far as this earthly life 



3l8 EMOTION 

is concerned, no time, however long, will be able to 
change — that one event of his death, brief though it 
was, unifies all the events of the future, so far as they 
might have been joined to him, whence his death, what- 
ever else it was, was sublime. 

Still another instance is this. A little boy having left 
his mother's humble cottage, one afternoon, went up the 
side of the neighboring cliff to play, an earthquake in 
the meantime chancing to take place, so that by the open- 
ing of a seam in the ground the cliff was made inacces- 
sible from the cottage. The boy, doubtless destroyed, 
was never heard of more — but for years his little coat, 
which he had hung on the limb of a tree, could still be 
seen flapping in the breeze upon the cliff. 

What we are told of Lucy Gray is pathetic. Caught 
in a blinding snowstorm, late one afternoon, no adequate 
search could be made for her until morning, when her 
little footsteps were followed to the bridge, beyond which 
no trace of her ever could be found. 

Descriptive points, as they help to bring her vividly 
before us, increase the pathos. She was sent by her 
father to go to the neighboring town to accompany her 
mother home who worked there during the day in a 
factory, she went blithe as a roe, she had a lantern in 
her hand, and she kicked the snow before her as she 
walked. 

Another point is to be taken into account, namely that 
it is not known what did actually bec6me of her, the 
chance existing that she may not have perished after all, 
except, of course, in the minds of others, the sadness 
which we might naturally feel being thereby somewhat 
softened. 



EMOTION 319 

What we are told of the babes in the woods is pa- 
thetic. They were left to wander in the pathless solitude, 
till broken-hearted, they died of hunger. 

Details woven in make the scene impressive. The 
children, a boy and a girl, were greatly beloved by their 
parents, who, dying left them well provided for and to 
the care of an uncle who caused them to suffer death 
in order that he might obtain the property. They were 
attractive. Not even the ruffian to whom they were 
committed to be killed would put them to death. 

Next after the family, the career of a person is a 
source of the pathetic. 

The " one more unfortunate," as she is called, illus- 
trates the point — in fact by no means a rare case — clos- 
ing the course of her life prematurely. 

Particulars are introduced to set the matter in a strong 
light. Her body is found in the river near a large city — 
her auburn tresses, though somewhat loosened, are still 
beautiful — her garments drip with water — she must 
have had parents, perhaps even friends — she found 
nothing, however, worth living for — in fact, plunged 
into the water, shivering in the bleak wind of March. 

We have also an example of the pathetic in the death 
of Saul and Jonathan, an example heightened by the 
circumstances that they were pleasant in their lives and 
in their death were not divided. 

It may be noted as a matter of interest that all words 
such as changeless, ceaseless, and the like raise emotions 
of the sublime, since they denote an infinite deprivation 
of quality. We may quote, for example, Ingersoll's 
" dreamless sleep of the tongueless dust." 

The pathetic is aroused by certain architectural ar- 



320 EMOTION 

rangements of tombs whereby sadness for the departure 
of friends is expressed. More particularly, however, is 
this done by certain sculptures, as, for example, that of 
the weeping willow, that of the sheaf of wheat, that of 
the broken column. 

The Laocoon, a piece of sculpture dug up at Rome, 
in the year 1506, represents a pathetic scene, the priest 
and his young sons perishing together in the grasp of 
the bodies of serpents wound around them. 

Paintings of the Crucifixion exhibit pathos — the 
mother of Jesus witnessing the untimely and unnatural 
death of her son. 

Requiems are pieces of music that have the effect to 
cause within us pathetic emotions, as for example, that 
composed by Schumann and known as the Requiem for 
Mignon. 

One of the characters of Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister " 
is a very interesting girl by the name of Mignon, who 
dies an untimely death and for whose funeral a piece is 
represented as having been rendered. It was this which 
furnished the point for Schumann. 

Poetry exhibits many instances of the pathetic, a few 
of which may be given. From Shakespeare take the 
instance of Imogen — 

Fear no more the heat o' the sun 
Nor the furious winter's rages, 
Thou thy earthly task hast done, 
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages. 

From Pope take the instance of the unfortunate lady — 

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, 
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, 



EMOTION 321 

By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, 
By strangers honored and by strangers mourned. 

From Gray take the instance of the rude forefathers — 

No more for them the blazing hearth shall burn 
Nor busy housewife ply her evening care, 
No children run to lisp their sire's return 
Nor climb his knee the envied kiss to share. 

From Pierpont take the instance of Napoleon — 

Here sleeps he now, alone, not one 
Of all the kings whose crowns he gave 
Bends o'er his dust, nor wife, nor son 
Has ever seen or sought his grave. 

From an unknown poet take the instance of a man un- 
known — 

Lay him down, his work is done, 

Vain for him is friend or foeman, 

Rise of moon or set of sun. 

Hand of man or kiss of woman. 

From Holland take the instance of humanity — 

Oh, the rigid rock is frigid, though its bed be summer mould, 
And the diamond glitters ever in the grasp of changeless gold ; 
And the laws that bring the seasons swing their cycles as they must. 
Though the ample road they trample blind the eyes with human dust, 
Moons will wax in ardent glory though man wane to hopeless gloom. 
Stars will sparkle in their splendor though he darkle to his doom. 

We have, in the case of the sublime, variety absorbed 
in unity, but directly the opposite of this in the case of 
the ludicrous, unity absorbed in variety. For it is 
agreed, on all hands, that things which call up the 
ludicrous are incongruous, characterized by inconsist- 
ency. Such unity as the ludicrous exhibits is a pretence 
merely, no substantial unity at all subsisting. On ac- 



322 EMOTION 

.count of this make-believe consistency, or, what is the 
same thing, on account of this assumed unity, we laugh. 

Ludicrous, therefore, is this example in Arithmetic — 
if it took a hundred thousand men twenty years to build 
the great pyramid of Gizeh, how long would have taken 
one man to build it alone ? Ludicrous is this question 
asked by a teacher to secure the attention of his class — 
"1 live at 529 Broadway, and drive a white horse, what 
is my name ? " Ludicrous, if true, is what is related 
of a German tutor, that he tried to prove to his pupils 
that the earth is round by citing the fact that shoe heels 
run over, wear off on one side. Ludicrous is the expla- 
nation which a negro made of telegraphy. There is, said 
he, a huge dog, his hind feet in New York, his fore feet 
in London — every time they step on his tail in New 
York, he barks in London. Ludicrous is what is told 
of an Irishman. His horse having caught one of his 
feet in the stirrup — " If you are going to get on," said 
the Irishman, " I will get off." Ludicrous is what is 
told of an Englishman. Coming to the cross-roads with 
a friend, he read on the sign, " 2| miles to Bristol, those 
who cannot read inquire of the blacksmith." " I see," 
said he, after pondering much, "the joke is that the 
blacksmith might not be in." 

Ludicrous is a scene described by Jean Paul Richter. 
A returning funeral procession passing near a river, a 
droll fellow ran to the water and plunged in, evidently 
with intent to commit suicide. The procession stopped and 
those in the carriages getting out, hastened to the river 
to see what might be done by way of rescuing him — 
and with some hope of success — as it seemed, since, 
standing in the water, he began to address them, saying 



EMOTION 323 

that he was yet open to conviction, could they show 
good reasons why he should not make an end of himself. 
He related how everything upon which he had entered 
in life had turned out amiss. He had tried keeping a 
home for old snipes in Vienna, but it had not paid him 
anything, owing to the fact that there were no snipes 
there. Going to London, he had made a business of 
writing speeches for those who were to be hanged, but 
had come near having to use one of them himself. 
Besides, his domestic relations were unsatisfactory. He 
continued, in fact, to discourse to the assembled multitude 
till finally it dawned upon them that he was but playing 
a practical joke upon them, having caused them to stop 
the procession to gather at the river for that very 
purpose. 

Ludicrous is what is told of an actor who gave a din- 
ner to certain others of his profession. All the guests 
except one had arrived. " It would be a good joke," 
said he, " If you would all get under the table and make 
him believe, when he comes in, that he is the first one 
to arrive." This was readily assented to by all. The 
remaining guest arriving, however, the host entered 
into a lengthy conversation with him, nowise referring 
to those under the table. These, at last getting weary, 
emerged one by one much to their chagrin. 

Ludicrous is what is reported of a backwoods preacher. 
Given to exaggeration, he had the assistance of a deacon 
who sat near him to whistle when he exceeded the 
bounds of truth, so that he might introduce timely 
modifications. Once the theme being the taking of the 
foxes by Samson, the preacher was explaining how he 
was able to catch so many foxes. " The foxes' tails in 



324 EMOTION 

~ those days," he went on to say, " were twenty feet long." 
The deacon hereupon whistHng, the preacher reduced the 
length of the tails to fifteen and even to ten feet, but 
without avail — the deacon continued to whistle. Becom- 
ing angry, the preacher then straightened himself up and 
cried out — " I won't take another inch off those foxes' 
tails if you whistle to all eternity ! " 

Ludicrous is what is related of a negro who heard a 
sermon on the passage in Genesis which describes the 
creation of man. *' What has been done once," said he, 
" can be done again. I am resolved to try it." Going 
to the brook, therefore, he shaped, as best he could, a 
man of mud. " To-morrow," said he, " I will come 
back and breathe into you the breath of life." It hap- 
pened, however, on his return the next day that the man 
could nowhere be found, meddlesome boys having 
thrown it into the water. Shortly afterwards, however, 
seeing in town a misshapen tramp who asked him why 
he kept following him around, he demanded of the tramp 
why he had run away before he got him finished. 

Ludicrous is this which is represented as a passage 
from an oration — " At Peoria, Illinois, is a bridge 500 
feet high, extending across the Illinois River. The 
other day a drover was driving through this bridge a 
flock of ten thousand sheep. The old bell-wether had 
nearly reached the middle of the bridge, when spying 
at his right an open window through which broad day- 
light streamed, he at once, recognizing his destiny, made 
a rush for glory and the grave. And not till he had 
passed far out into the open sunlight did he appreciate 
his critical situation, when stretching out his four feet 
to the cardinal points of the compass, with a plaintive 



EMOTION 325 

bleat, he descended to his fate. The next sheep and 
the next followed, each imitating the remark and gesture 
of the leader. For hours it rained sheep. The erewhile 
placid stream soon became incarnadine with the life-blood 
of moribund mutton. And not until the brief tail of the 
last sheep, as it passed through the window, waved adieu 
to this wicked world, did the movement cease." 

While the sublime is a case in which variety is gath- 
ered up in unity and the ludicrous is a case in which 
unity is gathered up in variety, the beautiful is a case in 
which unity and variety stand in even balance, it is the 
symmetrical — the use of the word beautiful here being, 
of course, in the restricted sense. 

The Parthenon of Athens, a temple on the acropolis, is 
reputed to have been the most beautiful building the world 
has ever seen. The parts of it were adjusted to one another 
according to ratios, there being, as the Greeks discov- 
ered, a rule for the harmony of sights, quite as much as 
a rule for the harmony of sounds, an optical as well as a 
musical scale. The whole building was made of pure 
white marble, contrasting pleasantly with the blue sky 
and with the green earth. Certain small portions of 
it and the statues and reliefs of the gables were painted 
in colors, while the reins of the sculptured horses were 
of metal, the eyes of gems. Within and without the 
temple were rows of white marble pillars, fluted and 
capped, equal in height, in the distance of their spaces 
equal. Inside the temple was an ivory statue of 
Minerva with a dress of gold. 

The Taj Mehal of Agra, esteemed the most beautiful 
of mausoleums, is a building composed of white marble 
which, by its purity, exhibits symmetry, a like condition 



326 EMOTION 

being in every part of it. This white marble in appro- 
priate places is inlaid with agates, jaspers, bloodstones, 
and the like, forming wreaths, scrolls, and frets, which 
by the just proportions and symmetrical arrangements 
of parts are fine in their effects — unsurpassed even, it 
is said. The minarets at the corners of the building are 
considered the most beautiful in existence, manifesting 
such perfect harmony. The dome in the centre, likewise 
captivates the beholder by the way its variety is made 
consistent with itself. The light of the sun is admitted 
through trellis work of white marble, so as to be subdued 
in its effects, extravagance or disproportion thus being 
avoided. 

The human body with its many parts, so adapted as 
to serve and preserve the whole is an object of beauty, 
especially when there is perfect symmetry, but more per- 
fect in form than the human body is a statue of it by the 
Greeks, in which the parts are all of the proper size and 
posture. All contradictions and inconsistencies have 
been excluded from it, there is the strict application of 
reason to art. 

The statue made by Phidias representing Jupiter was 
the finest one which has ever appeared. The expression 
of the face, though majestic, was yet mild and peace- 
ful — its symmetry permitted no extravagance. The 
statue was made of white ivory, but the draping and the 
wreath on the head were of gold, the contrast in the 
color of these materials being such as in the taste of the 
Greeks to heighten the effect. For it was delicate and 
not disproportionate. Jupiter was represented as sitting 
on a throne, holding in his right hand the well-known 
statue. Winged Victory, in his left a sceptre surmounted 



EMOTION 327 

by an eagle. The garment of gold, which covered the 
entire body, except the head and neck, was worked with 
figures and lilies. We may not wonder that everybody 
who had seen this statue was accounted fortunate. 

Perhaps the most beautiful picture of the Greeks was 
that which is known as Venus Rising from the Sea, one 
for which Augustus, we are told, paid a hundred thou- 
sand dollars; but the most beautiful picture of all time, 
it is presumed, is the Sistine Madonna, painted by 
Raphael, a picture which is still to be seen at Dresden. 
Curtains are represented as having just been drawn 
back. The mother of Jesus is seen stepping triumph- 
antly forward in flowing robes, holding the infant 
Saviour in her arms. On the one side kneels St. Sixtus, 
on the other St. Catherine. Beneath them are two 
cherubs in perfect repose ; above, the faces of the heavenly 
host. Everything is in due proportion. Everything 
harmonizes with everything else. 

Music, by the harmony of its sounds, is beautiful, every 
note in an opera, for example, having an exact ratio to 
every other. Whatever the music, if Jo is made by 128 
vibrations, re can only be made by 144, mi by 160, and 
so on, a harmony of parts being necessary to the very 
existence of music. 

The QEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles by the unbroken 
unity of its action and the concentration of the interest 
is the most beautiful drama in existence — that is to say, 
while other dramas, as notably those of Shakespeare, 
surpass the OEdipus in content, none, we may believe, 
has ever surpassed it in form. 

An army of soldiers is beautiful, the men all dressed 
in the same manner, formed into companies, regiments. 



328 EMOTION 

brigades, divisions, and corps, moving in perfect order 
and with perfect precision, the perfect expression of the 
harmonious blending of unity and variety. 

A plowman's furrows are to a certain extent beautiful, 
for the reason that he has worn away the glebe by turn- 
ing over a set portion of the ground every time he went 
through the field. For the same reason, rows of grow- 
ing vegetables, swathes of grain, and the like are beau- 
tiful. 

Principles of science or of art are beautiful, since they 
show the one in the many, each principle being the gist 
of innumerable examples, an even balance being thus 
exhibited between law and fact. The rule for quad- 
ratics, for example, is good for all possible cases of equa- 
tions of the second degree with one unknown quantity. 
The law of causality holds for everything which takes 
place throughout the universe. The golden rule pre- 
scribes a method for all the manifold dealings between 
men. 

The character of a man is said to be beautiful, if it 
begets acSons all of which are directed by some simple 
principle, without any exaggeration or disproportion. 

The picturesque is a case in which great and promi- 
nent variety has yet a sufficing, though slight unity. 

It finds the best of illustrations in a landscape, inas- 
much as here multitudinous details blend in the general 
effect. For example, gnarled and scraggy oak trees, 
amidst rocks and the underbrush of the woods, are 
picturesque. It has often been remarked that a moss- 
covered cottage on a rough and stony bank, overlooking 
a river whose course is irregular and whose motion is 
slow is picturesque. Again, the scene of the old oaken 



EMOTION 329 

bucket is picturesque — a small cottage, an old dairy, a 
well, the aforesaid bucket, a wide-spreading chestnut, a 
deep-tangled wild-wood, a meadow, a stream pouring 
over rocks, a quaint bridge over this stream, and an old 
mih. 

The landscape of the Jamestown ruins is picturesque — 
the broken tower of the old church, the quaint tomb- 
stones of the founders of Virginia, shrubbery, birds, and 
the murmur of the water. 

The landscape described by Keats in his Endymion is 
picturesque. Hidden in the depth of the woods was a 
lawn in the exact shape of a parallelogram, the green 
grass of which was interspersed with daisies. This 
lawn was walled in on all sides, so to say, by the trees 
and undergrowing stems. All that could be seen of the 
sky, therefore, was a parallelogram of blue. The air of 
the lawn was sweet-scented from the moistened eglan- 
tine of the woods. An altar of white marble with a 
tress of newly budded flowers upon it was at one end of 
the lawn. To this came a great procession, observing 
some religious rite, m.en, women, and children with fair 
faces and dressed in white, then the priest wearing on 
his head a chaplet of beechen leaves. In his right hand 
he carried a vase filled with sparking wine, in his left 
hand he had a basket full of flowers — cresses, lilies, and 
thyme. Lastly came a car drawn by prancing steeds. 
The priest after exhorting the people to thanksgiving, 
puts the flowers upon the altar, pours the wine upon the 
ground. The choir chants and the youth dance to harps 
and pipes. 

The Yosemite presents a picturesque landscape. 
Standing on some commanding eminence, the visitor 



330 EMOTION 

"beholds a valley situated between high granite walls 
over which pour small streams of water, spread out into 
cascades by the breeze. The rocky steeples of the gran- 
ite walls pierce the blue vault of heaven above, below is 
the carpet of the valley, flowers in profusion. The old- 
est trees on earth are there in the form of giant ever- 
greens. The river is so clear as to reveal shoals of trout. 
The cemetery, known as Mount Auburn, near Bos- 
ton, presents a landscape which is highly picturesque. 
A large tract of land composed of ridges and hills is 
covered with trees and shrubbery. Interspersed are 
glens in which are ponds and fountains. Paths wind 
and circle in all directions, many roads are also seen. A 
large chapel supports a growth of ivy. On an eminence 
is a high tower. Everywhere are tombs, stone or bronze, 
and many of them with statues. Here rests Longfellow 
whose name recalls the Psalm of Life, upon a ridge, 
there lies Lowell of the Biglow Papers. Yonder rises 
the shaft of Anson Burlingame, once special envoy of 
China. On a side-hill is the red granite of Rufus 
Choate. Within a little vale is the abode of Edward 
Everett, he who discoursed of the dead at Gettysburg, 
now dead himself. Not far off, John Pierpont, who 
once made verses about Napoleon's tomb, now fills a 
tomb himself. Agassiz, who discovered that boulders 
were brought to us on blocks of ice, here sleeps under one 
of those very boulders. On a certain tombstone are 
carved some fern leaves, fittingly memorial of the so- 
called Fanny Fern. On another is wrought the image 
of a harp to typify the poetical powers of Frances 
Osgood. Here the ill-fated Margaret Fuller is recalled 
only by the stone of her ill-fated child. Charlotte Cush- 



EMOTION 331 

man's expression is an obelisk merely. The breezes 
rustle in the branches of the trees, the birds fly about, 
while fleecy clouds float in the blue sky above. The 
whole — hills, ridges, glens, vales, fountains, ponds, 
shrubbery, trees, tombstones, statues, breezes, birds, and 
clouds — makes up a picturesque scene, seldom, if ever," 
excelled. 

Other things than landscapes, however, call out feel- 
ings of the picturesque, for example, cathedrals, markets, 
the character of a man and his style. 

The mediaeval cathedrals are picturesque, built as they 
are, with steeples, gables, and vaulted ceilings, the 
interior effect being heightened by stained glass, by 
pictures, by statues, and by tombs. The priest is in his 
robes, speaking Latin, the choir chanting, candles burn- 
ing, incense rising, the whole congregation kneeling at 
mass, princes by the side of beggars, fustian in contact 
with satin. 

The ordinary German market is picturesque. There 
are present men, women, boys, and girls in great num- 
bers with multitudes of things to sell — pails, bowls, tubs, 
barrels, butter, cheese, eggs, potatoes, onions, lettuce, 
peas, cabbage, radishes, pickles, fish, sausages, hams, 
beef, mutton, pork, apples, oranges, peaches, cherries, 
huckleberries, melons. The place is filled with dogs, 
dog-wagons, horses, donkeys. All sorts of people are 
buying, all sorts of people are selling. 

Th» features of certain men are picturesque — rugged, 
misshapen, overgrown with beard, overhung with hair — 
yet pleasing. 

The character of many a man is picturesque, as for 
example, that of Abraham Lincoln, who was a man awk- 
ward in his actions, peculiar in his dress, given to jocu- 



332 EMOTION 

larity, easily forgiving and forgetting injuries, yet 
withal capable, stern, profound. 

The style of certain writers is picturesque, as for ex- 
ample, that of Carlyle. Wishing to express the truth 
that in the gain or loss of one man all the rest have 
equal share, he said that at the top of a hill lived a 
wealthy family in a palace, at the foot of the hill a poor 
family in a hovel. The family at the foot of the hill, 
dying and having nothing else to leave the family at the 
top of the hill, left them the typhoid fever of which 
accordingly the family at the top of the hill all died. 

Contrasted, with the ordinary, the wonderful has 
indeed marked variety, varies much from the ordinary, 
yet as the wonderful is matter of fact, or if not, is rep- 
resented as such, it stands in unison with things the 
most commonplace. 

The wonderful, then, like the sublime, the pathetic, 
the ludicrous, the beautiful, and the picturesque is but 
another case of the principle, known as unity in variety. 

The form of our thought is that of unity in variety, 
every thought being in fact expressible in a sentence, as 
the junction of subject and predicate. 

Whatever, then, takes the form of unity in variety 
pleases us — ^we see ourselves in it, so to say, see in it the 
form under which things exist. 

Of unity in variety, however, there may be several 
kinds, what is known as the sublime, what is known as 
the pathetic, what is known as the ludicrous, what is 
known as the beautiful, what is known as the picturesque, 
lastly, what is known as the wonderful. 

There are things to excite our wonder in the mineral, 
vegetable, and animal world. For example, the falling 
of stones from the sky, particularly, when accompanied 



EMOTION 333 

with a blaze and an explosion, has been deemed wonder- 
ful. It is likewise a matter of wonder that at Hilde- 
sheim is a rose-bush 800 years old. It is further won- 
derful that in Colombia should be found a bird which 
has by nature an image of the sun and moon on its 
wings, just as there is among us the death's-head moth, 
which has upon its back the skull and cross-bones. 

The scope of the wonderful, however, belongs more 
particularly to human action and the vicissitudes of 
human life. 

Who has not felt pleasure when he has heard of the 
statue of Memnon, a work of art, wrought by human 
hands, which stood in the sands of Egpyt and sang a 
song every morning as the sun arose? 

It adds, perhaps, to our pleasure to know that, after 
all the ravages of time, that statue is still standing in 
the same place, although it now sings no more. 

The name of Rameses the Great calls forth feelings 
of the wonderful. It was he who had built the grotto 
temple of Abusimbel which can still be seen. It was he 
who was many a time and oft at the temple of Karnak 
which is still visited, it was he who had made of himself 
four massive statues, three of which still look proudly over 
the Egyptian sands, it was he who had engraved on the 
rocks of Egypt those words which we still read there, 
" I will make mankind talk eternally and forever of me." 
All this is wonderful enough, in itself, but is more won- 
derful when we remember that all this was before Moses 
led the Jews by the waters of the Red Sea, before one 
word of our Bible had as yet been written, before Jeru- 
salem, Athens, Carthage, and Rome were founded, 
before Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero, 
Alexander and Caesar were born. With Rameses, how- 



334 EMOTION 

ever, the wonderful does not cease, his strange prediction 
to make mankind talk forever of him seeming likely to 
be fulfilled. For, after lying for thirty-three hundred 
years in a vault, his body, in our day, again sees the light. 
Every little hamlet of the world may now behold a like- 
ness of his dying gaze. 

We have the case of an unsolved mystery as an ex- 
ample of the wonderful, A mason by trade, such is the 
story, was one evening accosted on the streets of Paris 
and asked to do a little work the reward for which should 
be ample. He was taken blindfolded he knew not where, 
till he found himself in a room, the ceiling, walls, and 
floor of which were covered with black cloth, only an 
opening on one side appearing. Here he was obliged 
to wall up with a trowel a young woman who was thrust 
alive into the opening. Everybody around him was 
masked. When the work was done he was taken back 
to the city and set at liberty. He, as quickly as he 
could, notified the authorities, but though diligent search 
was made, Bonaparte especially urging it, no clue to the 
mystery ever could be found. 

The case of the Man in the Iron Mask, as the same 
is called, is another example, it being impossible, to this 
day, to say who he was, although seventeen hundred 
volumes of archives have been gone through for that 
purpose. 

The affair imagined by Jean Paul Richter is still 
another good example. Albano, together with his 
tutors, meets his father for the first time and by appoint- 
ment on the beautiful island of Lake Maggiore. His 
father informs him that his mother, whom the boy never 
remembers to have seen, she having died in his infancy, 
left certain queer directions which he when he arrives 



EMOTION 335 

at manhood, is to follow. Three different persons will 
meet him on the same day in different places, each giv- 
ing him a sealed envelope, the contents in each case 
being a card with the name and number of a street in a 
certain city. To that house, Albano is to repair, where, 
searching through it, he shall find betimes a room in 
which are pictures hanging against the wall. Pressing 
the knobs by which these pictures are hung, one after 
another, a certain one, when so pressed, will set off an 
alarm clock. Taking down this picture he shall open the 
secret doors behind it. He will discover there the image 
of a woman, in her right hand a crayon, on her left hand 
three rings. When he presses the. ring on the middle 
finger of the image of the woman, the image, operated 
by clock-work, will rise, step forward, and with the 
crayon mark on the wall a spot where is another secret 
compartment. Opening this, he shall find a sort of spy- 
glass. Looking at a certain medallion, which his father 
has given him, through the eye-piece of this glass he 
shall see the likeness of his sister whom he has never 
known. Looking at another medallion, which his father 
has likewise given him, with the object-piece of this 
glass, he shall see the likeness of his deceased mother. Out 
of these medallions, without the glasses, however, he can 
make nothing. Having, then, done all this, he shall next 
press the ring finger of the image of the woman, when 
the image will write with the crayon the name of the 
church where is deposited his mother's coffin. Within 
the coffin he will find a stone slab and inside of that a 
document wherein everything will be explained to him, 
but till the things mentioned have been gone through 
with, he is to know nothing of them. 



CHAPTER XV 

DESTINY 

The processes of the mind being what they are, the 
question arises, What is the natural destiny of the mind ? 
Machines show in their make-up for what they were 
intended. We do not mistake a printing press for a 
corn-sheller, or a road-scraper for a lathe. The mind 
by its peculiarity also shows for what it exists. We do 
not mistake its natural purpose for an unnatural one. 
The end of the mind is its own perfection, intellectuality. 

We have, then, to justify the choice of Solomon, we 
have to show that wisdom is our being's end and aim. 

The proof of the proposition that the supreme end 
of human existence is knowledge turns on three consider- 
ations, first, that there are no ends possible to us but 
secularity and spirituality; secondly, that secularity is 
subordinate to spirituality ; and thirdly, that among spirit- 
ual things knowledge is chiefest. 

To take up the first point, it must strike us as a 
very strange circumstance that man is fitted to attain 
so few things, nothing, in fact, but secularity and spirit- 
uality. Secularity is a name which stands mainly for 
wealth, power, and fame, spirituality a name which stands 
mainly for art, morality, piety, and knowledge. What 
anybody can attain to, it might be shown, is one, or 
more, or all of these things, nothing else. The question 

336 



DESTINY 337 

of the natural destiny of the mind is therefore circum- 
scribed within narrow Hmits. 

Coming to the second consideration, namely, that secu- 
larity is dependent on spirituality, this, it may be said, 
is the same thing as that wealth, power, and fame are 
dependent on refinement, morality, religion, and knowl- 
edge. We are to seek first the kingdom of heaven 
to the end that other desirable things be added unto us. 

For attaining wealth, power, and fame, not only is 
honesty, but also courtesy and even piety, the best policy ; 
knowledge, moreover, is needed. 

It is generally admitted, indeed, that knowledge is 
of great importance toward securing wealth, power, and 
fame, if, for no other reason, because intelligent organi- 
zation counts for so much. 

Organization is particularly important for accomplish- 
ing anything secular, because of the uncertainty which 
the nature of time introduces into human affairs. 

The future is not present, nor the present future. 
When the opportunity is at hand, we are not prepared 
for it, when we are ready for it, the opportunity has 
gone by. Everything, moreover, is arrived at only 
through a tedious process. The seed which has been 
stored up over winter has to be put in the ground in 
the spring, the growing plants have to be tended, the 
vegetables have to be gathered, cleaned, and cooked — 
how many times, indeed, must they be moved! On 
the same principle, one's capacity for doing anything 
does not spring ready made into being, as Minerva is 
said to have done from the head of Jupiter. Think 
also of the evanescence of things ! Our eating and drink- 
ing will last us but for a few hours, when we must eat 



338 DESTINY 

and drink again; our sleep refreshes us but for a day, 
when we must again sleep. Our toilet cannot be made 
once for all, but has constantly to be repeated. Our 
garments wax old unlike those which the Israelites had 
in the desert, our houses have to be repaired, that is to 
say, built over. Furthermore, we can give our attention 
to but a few things at a time, our doing these things well 
meaning our doing others badly. 

Against the uncertainty brought into affairs because 
of the nature of time, organization, as was said, is the 
great specific, organization which can be gotten, however, 
only through knowledge, whence, for this reason, secu- 
larity can succeed but through spirituality, that is to 
say, through wisdom. 

The necessary dependence of secularity on spirituality 
is also apparent from common observation, the boorish, 
wicked, impious, and ignorant being usually neither pros- 
perous, nor powerful, nor renowned. 

We may notice in passing that the necessity which 
our nature imposes on us to subject secularity to spiritu- 
ality explains things otherwise not easy to understand, 
the disregard of secular things for spiritual ends. The 
Hindoos, with a view to getting spiritual good even 
inflict on themselves great tortures. A man, for instance, 
will have a hook stuck in the skin of his back and tied 
to a sweep by which means he is then swung rapidly in 
the air, the theory being that this improves his mind. 
A man with the same end in view, will also hold his 
hand above his head for days, weeks, and even for 
months, till from inaction and its unnatural position, the 
hand almost withers away. A man will even fall in front 
of the car of Juggernaut to be crushed to death, abandon- 



DESTINY 339 

ing for spirituality all things secular whatsoever. Man- 
kind have been loud in their praises of Regulus for 
keeping his word and returning to Carthage, though his 
doing so was the giving up of secularity altogether. We 
also commend Jane Eyre and Jean Valjean for acting 
on the same principle. 

It being settled, then, that there are not other ends 
than secularity and spirituality and that secularity is sub- 
ject to spirituality, it only remains to settle what in 
spirituality is of most importance. 

Knowledge being indispensable to religion, art, and 
morality, knowledge is for that reason, it should seem, 
entitled to the primacy. 

It is only through knowledge that correct ideas on 
religion can be formed. Besides, it is a fact that men 
of the greatest piety — Wesley, for instance — have been 
men of the greatest knowledge. 

Knowledge, it is also conceded, is necessary to correct 
taste, the man without high attainments in knowledge 
not being able to chisel captivating shapes from the 
marble, or to paint enrapturing scenes on the canvas. 

As to what concerns morality, although the general 
principles of it require no great knowledge, yet the appli- 
cation of them requires, we might say, all knowledge. 

How great in fact is the liability to error has often 
been set forth and its chief cases pointed out, after which 
manner we may proceed to indicate them. Through 
indolence, we often fail to make a proper investigation 
of a matter thereby inducing improper action. Had 
Bonaparte's officers made the right study of the defiles 
of Kaluga, the disasters of Moscow, it is said, would 
have been unknown, Some trivial association, more- 



340 DESTINY 

over, may so impose on us as to render us incapable of 
doing what otherwise we should not find it difficult to 
perform, whence the need of knowledge. For instance, 
Herodotus relates that the Scythians being at war with 
their slaves were unable to overcome them till they at- 
tacked them with whips, the reason being, the slaves 
had been used to cowering before whips and now, even 
though armed, they were, because of the association, 
incapable of offering resistance. What happened in the 
case of these slaves, happens in the case of us all, indeed 
we are all the slaves of associations. It is only knowl- 
edge that can deliver us from their thraldom. Our in- 
terest, or at least what we take to be such, may warp our 
minds from the living truth, unless indeed knowledge 
save us from this. Preachers, for example, have been 
known to lay ten times as much stress on what is unes- 
sential in religion as on what is essential in it, simply 
because their lives were so bound up in some sect. A 
pugnacious disposition may prevent us from forming a 
proper estimation of the merits of a case, if our knowl- 
edge is inadequate. The Campbellites and their oppo- 
nents used to debate with much alacrity the question of 
the divinity of Christ, without, however, ever coming 
to any satisfactory conclusion on the subject, each party 
to the controversy being so desirous of carrying their 
point. Each party were a little surer of their position 
after each debate than before, the arguments on the other 
side having had just the contrary effect of what they 
were intended to have. Two men would debate very 
spiritedly for a long time, then going home, each would 
tell his family how he vanquished the other. Caesar, in 
the account of the wars which he waged in France two 



DESTINY 341 

thousand years ago tells us that men easily believe what 
they wish to have true. Without great knowledge, we 
are also likely to err from our proneness to follow the 
fashion. Opinions, because they are fads, obtain great 
hold on us, we shall as soon shake off the old man of the 
sea. There was once a world, it is said, in which every- 
body was hump-backed, in short to be such was there the 
fashion. A man chancing to appear in that world with- 
out a hump on his back was thought to be too unsightly 
to live. Worse than things, themselves, to make us err, 
are words. How many are their meanings! How 
difficult it is for us to arrive at the right one! Every- 
thing we hear or read may, in fact, be regarded as a 
series of hints, we getting according to our ability to 
guess. The Dutchman thought that transubstantiation 
meant bowing at the high altar, the Irishman that it 
meant doing one's whole duty ! Those who say that 
they take the Scriptures just as they read, at best mean 
no more than this — that they take them just as they think 
they read. 

The sources of error then being so many and so great, 
knowledge becomes necessary, if we are to act properly, 
good acting being possible only through good thinking. 

It has truly been said that a man's fate in each instance 
depends on his finding the right class in which to put a 
thing. He must decide whether this or that is the right 
thing to be done with reference to this or that object in 
view. Everybody has at each moment to conduct a sort 
of last judgment, to part the sheep from the goats, so to 
say. If he does not know a sheep from a goat, it is plain 
what mistakes he must make. 

We always decide a case on the ground of some rea- 
son, we should decide it better if we had better reasons. 



342 DESTINY 

It is noticed that efforts to reform persons consist in 
getting certain ideas into their heads. There would, 
indeed, be no use in talking to one, without we assumed 
that knowledge is a condition of right action. 

We are led up to the conclusion, therefore, that knowl- 
edge is chief among spiritual attainments, the one on 
which in fact the others depend. 

We may also argue in this way — art, morality, and 
religion are founded on the truth of things, deriving as 
they do their nature from it, wherefore the coming 
through knowledge at the truth is the coming at them. 
All else than the truth, says Hegel, is error, trouble, 
opinion, strife, caprice, and evanescence. 

The truth of things, then, being the basis of art, 
morality, and religion, we bring art, morality, and relig- 
ion to perfection only by having a knowledge of the 
truth. This is the sense in which a knowledge of the 
truth of things is the end of our existence. 

It turns out, then, that the fulfilling of the end for 
which we were born into the world is possible only 
through those branches of learning which make up our 
courses of study, these being concerned with the system 
of truth as such. 

The truth of things, the knowledge of which is to 
make us free, consists primarily in mathematics, physics, 
psychology, and biology. For things in general are 
time, space, matter, mind, and life. Arithmetic is the 
truth of time, geometry the truth of space, physics the 
truth of matter, psychology the truth of mind, and 
biology the truth of life. 

A knowledge of these subjects, therefore, it is which 
is necessary if we are to attain the end of our being. 



DESTINY 343 

Arithmetic is the science of the succession of the 
moments of time, one, two, three — in short, the science 
of numbers. Geometry is the science of extension, treat- 
ing, accordingly, of Hues, surfaces, and soHds. Physics, 
in an extended sense, is the science of matter, including 
chemistry, astronomy, and other branches. Psychology, 
in the general sense of the term, is inclusive of logic, 
aesthetics, and ethics, even history. Biology compre- 
hends physiology, botany, zoology, and the like. A gen- 
eral view of the consistency of all the sciences taken 
together is metaphysics. 

Inasmuch as a knowledge of the truth of things 
consists primarily in knowing mathematics, physics, 
psychology, and biology, if, then, these sciences existed 
in perfection, a mastery of them would constitute a per- 
fect knowledge of the truth of things. 

It has, indeed, been claimed that they do exist in per- 
fection. For in the Himalaya Mountains, it is said, is 
a brotherhood which knows everything. Were we in 
their condition, we might say that we had attained the 
end of our being, we should know as we are known. 
We should have the means of a perfect conduct. The 
story of the Himalaya brotherhood, however, we may 
take as a myth, teaching us the perfectability of mankind. 

We must take into account, nevertheless, that many 
persons claim that the human mind can never arrive at 
a satisfactory knowledge of things, owing either to the 
limitation of our faculties or to the nature of things. 

To the first objection, it seems a sufficient reply to 
make that, if there are things which, because of our 
natural constitution, we are prevented from knowing, it 
is the same to us as if these things do not exist — that of 



344 DESTINY 

which there can be no experience being practically non- 
existent, notwithstanding its existence in fact. To know 
all else would be virtually to know all things. 

The second objection, that we can never arrive at a 
complete knowledge of things, owing to their complexity, 
is better, though, perhaps, not well founded. It is the 
objection of those who bear a banner with the strange 
device, " Ignoramus, ignorabimus," certain positivists, 
such as Comte, for example. 

According to Comte, our great knowledge of astron- 
omy is due solely to the simplicity of our solar system, 
the planets being few in number, widely separated, and 
unequal in mass. Had this all been different, says he, 
had the planets been numerous, crowded together, and 
in mass nearly the same, we must have remained 
ignorant of astronomy. 

He cites the case of medicine, a science in which com- 
paratively little progress has been made. The reason, he 
says, is not far to seek. The subject matter of medicine 
is so complicated that we are unable to disentangle facts 
of it from combinations in which they are found. 

Comte admits that every problem is merely one of 
number, every phenomenon being susceptible of expres- 
sion in an equation, logically so, indeed, but not prac- 
tically so. 

In the case of medicine, even could we isolate a certain 
phenomenon from the complexity in which it exists, we 
should not, he thinks, be able to trace out the multitude 
of relations which it sustains to other things. The great 
amount of detail would overwhelm us. We should not 
be able to grasp in the mind so many things whereby to 
come at the law of the whole. 



DESTINY 345 

He supposes that, if it were possible for us to do so, 
the practice of medicine would be something like en- 
gineering or surveying. What to do in case of a cer- 
tain disease, say one of the liver, would be discovered 
by making an algebraic calculation, possibly by finding 
the hyperbolic logarithm of a certain infinitesimal. 

He allows that the discovery of the calculus has en- 
abled us to solve problems the solution of which was 
formerly despaired of. How, then, it might be asked, 
does it appear that the discovery of still other processes 
may not render easy the solution of problems now 
deemed insolvable? • 

Moreover, for all we know to the contrary, nature may 
at bottom be very simple, depending merely on a few 
atomistic conditions, the which being known, we should 
arrive at all truth. 

We may say, also, that with our present knowledge, 
it would be no more wonderful, if we should arrive at 
a knowledge of all things, than it once would have been 
wonderful that we should arrive at the knowledge which 
we already possess. What idea, for example, can the ox 
or the horse have of finding the distance around the 
earth or that of the earth to the sun, what of discovering 
how the boulders came to be where they now are or of 
discovering what the climate of Greenland was ages ago ? 
What idea could savages even have had of the possibility 
of determining such questions? 

Of mathematics, of psychology, of physics, we already 
know much. What we are chiefly ignorant of is biology. 
How are mind and matter related to living organisms? 
This is the question. It involves the question of the 
habitation of the planets, has relation therefore to every 



34^ DESTINY 

part of space. It involves the question of the succession 
of forms of hfe, has therefore relation to every part of 
time. 

What is already known of the truth of things is much. 
What is matter of chief regret is that so few persons 
possess it. It is even now as if there is a brotherhood, 
small in numbers, to which is confided the secrets of 
existence, the other members of the human family being 
deprived of them. What is known of mathematics it 
would take a long time to compass, what is known of 
physics a long time, what is known of pyschology a long 
time. 

Everybody has the opportunity to join the brotherhood 
of those who know, is in fact obligated by his nature to 
join it. He must join it in fact or miss his mission. 

Even to acquire the elements of mathematics, of 
physics, of psychology, and of biology is to take an hon- 
orable degree in the brotherhood of science, all further 
attainments depending on these elements. 

It cannot be said that one has not time to learn these 
elements, must forsooth labor for a living — it having 
already been demonstrated that even a living depends on 
their being known. It is not necessary to ask what 
shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and 
lose his own mind? Eor without his mind he cannot 
even gain the whole world. 

Why our courses of study are partly literary is ex- 
plained from the fact that the attainment of truth is 
possible only through language, it being just as neces- 
sary that we should be able to tell what we know as it 
is to know it — indeed how should we even know it with- 
out somebody had told it? 



DESTINY 347 

All courses of study, therefore, consist of two and only 
two parts, the scientific and the literary, the mastery of 
which is necessary to our arriving at the end of our 
existence, science being concerned with the truth of 
things, literature with making it known. 

The grand divisions of literary expression are essays, 
history, oratory, poetry. To be more specific, the ex- 
pression of certain phases of truth is accomplished in the 
essay which if it be long and systematic is called a treat- 
ise. But instead of expressing truth in abstract form, 
we may use narrative, tell what happened — this is his- 
tory. When, instead of narrative by another, the one 
interested expresses the truth directly himself, we have 
oratory, one, as we say, makes a speech. Lastly, poetry 
arises because truth may be expressed generally as well 
as individually — we may tell what is true of classes of 
society and what is true of these not in one time or place 
merely but in all times and places. The Achilles of 
Homer for example, is not Achilles as Cyrus is Cyrus, 
but is, in a way a general character, what in fact many 
a man is. 

Literature as it exists on this earth, flows from a few 
great elevations, just as the rivers of the earth descend 
from a few sheds. 

The four greatest names in literature are Homer, 
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. But with Homer may be 
placed Job and with Shakespeare Cervantes. From 
Homer descend Herodotus, Thucydides, Pindar, Sopho- 
cles, Demosthenes, and Plato, men of such powerful lit- 
erary expression as still to be in some ways unsurpassed. 
The Romans, however, improved upon these in some im- 
portant particulars of judgment, whence we have Virgil, 



348 DESTINY 

-Csesar, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, Plautus, Ter- 
ence, and Cicero. But Roman literature nevertheless 
is descended from Homer the same as the Greek. All 
things considered, it reaches its highest point in Cicero, 
he being in many ways the best example of literary ex- 
pression in the annals of time, the greatest master of 
composition that the world has ever known. Of his 
writings, though he died before the birth of our Saviour, 
there remain nearly eight hundred letters, the greatest 
source of information respecting his time we possess. 
More than fifty of his speeches have withstood the shock 
of time and it may truly be said of them that none as good 
as they, since he spoke them, have been heard on earth. 
Moreover, fourteen of his dialogues on philosophy are 
still preserved which all the generations of men are 
fated to read. From Job are descended David, Isaiah, 
Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, the expressions of whom are 
destined to work their way into the mind of every inhab- 
itant of the earth. From Dante, not as many descend 
as from Homer, yet Petrarch, Boccaccio, Milton, and 
Pollok. We are to understand that Dante was really 
portraying all human life as it was, is, and will be, was 
doing this under the guise of depicting a world of 
retribution. From Shakespeare descend Bunyan, Bruy- 
ere, Fielding, Macaulay, and the like, their name being 
legion. From Cervantes descend Lope de Vega, Rabe- 
lais, Swift, Sterne, and Voltaire. From Goethe descend 
Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Browning, Tol- 
stoi, and Ibsen, indeed many more. 

This is literature, the mastery of which enables us to 
attain the subsidiary end of our existence, though, of 
course, some importance must attach to expression 



DESTINY 349 

through arts other than Hterature, through music 
especially. 

So much then for the theoretical proof that the attain- 
ment of truth is the end for which we were created. 

Here is the place to notice the claim of Schopenhauer 
that we have no end at all, our whole existence as 
rational creatures being a bad blunder. We must take 
into account that Schopenhauer distinguishes between 
a proximate and an ultimate end, admitting the existence 
of the former, but denying that of the latter. Schopen- 
hauer teaches that spirituality, primarily knowledge, is 
the proximate end of our existence, that which it is 
our natural destiny to attain unto. Since, then, what is 
the purpose of our being here and now is of chief im- 
portance to us, we may take the claim of Schopenhauer 
about the ultimate purpose of our being as practically 
not coming to so much after all. 

Manifestly, it is possible also to prove from experience 
that knowledge is what we exist for. We may instance 
the history of communities and that of individuals. 

To enter on the first case — those communities which 
have done most for knowledge and the expression of it 
are those which are the most renowned, Athens, for ex- 
ample, whence it seems to follow that knowledge is the 
end for which we entered on life. 

It was at Athens that Plato, the first of the human 
race to do so, brought the explanation of all things 
within definite bounds, indeed, his discovery that every- 
thing is dominated by eternal principles can hardly be 
overestimated. He has opened a fountain in the wilder- 
ness of this world, at which the weary still slake their 
thirst. Well, therefore, has he earned the sobriquet of 



350 DESTINY 

the divine. It was at Athens that Aristotle discovered 
logic, the greatest of all the discoveries vouchsafed man 
to make, that of Columbus, in comparison with it, paling 
into insignificance. He expounded the universe on prin- 
ciples of logic, being in fact blamed by Alexander for 
letting out the secrets of existence. Furnished by Alex- 
ander with thousands of men and with nearly a million 
of dollars, he was able to have collected a multitude of 
specimens, making use of which he founded Zoology, 
writing an account still extant of five hundred animals. 
Theophrastus, a pupil of his, completed the first great 
treatise on Botany. Moreover, psychology was founded 
by Aristotle, his writing on that subject being the first 
to appear. At Athens was produced the first history 
which is entitled to rank as a work of art, Herodotus in 
it presenting a multitude of facts and legends with unity 
of design, employing to do so a pure and simple style. 
At Athens Thucydides wrote the first history which was 
ever conceived and worked out from a philosophical 
point of view, the best history which up to our tirnes has 
yet appeared. At Athens Demosthenes made the speech 
on the crown, a speech better than any which has sub- 
sequently been delivered. At Athens Sophocles pro- 
duced those plays which for concentration of effect and 
unity of design surpass anything else ever attempted. 
At Athens ^schylus and Euripides exhibited their 
plays, they, with Sophocles, being the founders of trag- 
edy. At Athens Aristophanes brought out his comic 
plays, which Jebb says combine excellencies found no- 
where else — extravagant fancy, delicate humor, and ex- 
quisite song. At Athens Ictinus constructed the Par- 
thenon, the most beautiful building ever erected on the 



DESTINY 351 

face of the earth. At Athens Phidias wrought those 
sculptures which are esteemed the best of time. At 
Athens was developed popular government, government 
by discussion, as it is called, that is to say, government 
by appeal to reason. The Greeks, in truth, discovered 
reason, a circumstance which explains all their works, 
why they originated republics, why they excluded incon- 
sistencies from art,, why they founded sciences. 

Athens, then, having done more for the advancement of 
knowledge than any other community, its fame is the 
greatest of all, this demonstrating, it should seem, that 
knowledge is our being's end and aim. 

The meaning of historical progress is that things get 
better and better adapted for mankind to perfect them- 
selves spiritually, as time advances. Battles, therefore, 
which have had the result to bring about conditions 
favorable to knowledge, are deemed important and are 
spoken of as decisive; Marathon, for instance. 

Creasy has well described how, four hundred and 
ninety years before the birth of Christ, the Athenians 
held a council of war on the slope of the mountain which 
overlooks the plain of Marathon, the question being 
whether or not they should fight the Persians who were 
in camp below them. The Athenians had only about 
eleven thousand men, their country was but a few miles 
in extent, and they were inexperienced in war, while the 
Persians were more than a hundred thousand strong, with 
a country reaching from the Hellespont to the Indus, 
from the Jaxartes to the Nile, and had never yet been 
beaten in battle. Still another thing put the Athenians 
at a disadvantage. The Spartans, though in sympathy 
with the Athenians, yet refused to assist them, owing to 



352 DESTINY 

superstition. They thought it would be unlucky to 
engage in battle before the full of the moon, an unfort- 
unate circumstance, as Creasy remarks, since the Atheni- 
ans had no way of hurrying up the full of the moon and 
no way of making the Persians wait for it. 

The matters at stake were truly momentous. Those 
men for whom Athens is now so much renowned, Plato, 
Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, ^schylus, Sophocles, 
Euripides, Aristophanes, Pericles, Demosthenes, Ictinus, 
Phidias, had not yet been born, and unless the Athenians 
should at once attack and put to rout the Persians, there 
was no chance whatever that they ever would be born, 
for the Athenians would certainly be taken captive to 
Persia. 

If the Persians effected a conquest of the territory, 
Athens as we now know it would never come to exist — 
Rome, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, 
and the modern world would never have any semblance. 

Some authorities indeed think that Gutenberg settled 
it that newspapers should be published, but really Mil- 
tiades settled it on the plain of Marathon. 

There was a tie vote in the council of war, but Calli- 
machus, the archon, persuaded by the speech of Miltiades, 
gave the deciding vote to engage the Persians, the most 
momentous ballot ever cast, since it was the occasion of 
the Athenians completely overthrowing the Persians. 

It is plain that our obligations to Miltiades have been 
but imperfectly discharged, indeed, never can be dis- 
charged. They are our debt for arithmetic, geometry, 
trigonometry, calculus, quaternions, chemistry, astron- 
omy, geology, mineralogy, anatomy, physiology, zoology, 
botany, psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, treatises, 
histories, oratory, poetry, railroads, steamboats, tele- 



DESTINY 353 

graphs, libraries, newspapers, schools, liberty, Chris- 
tianity. 

The tomb of Miltiades, if it can be found, should be 
kept covered with freshly cut flowers, his monument 
should be reared to the skies. 

The Athenians guided, as we may suppose, by some 
divine instinct, realized the immensity of what they were 
doing, so impressed were they as to believe that men 
even rose from the dead and took their places in their 
ranks to fight. For hundreds of years afterwards, peo- 
ple believed that they could still see at night the contend- 
ing armies on the plain, could hear the shouts of war- 
riors, the neighs of the horses. Even to this day shep- 
herds living in the vicinity have a similar experience. 

Pausanias records that he saw six hundred years after 
the battle the monuments which the Athenians erected 
to the memory of the slain. The mound which covers 
their bodies survives to this day. The battle was de- 
picted on the temple of Victory, where even now it is 
said, some of the figures can be dimly made out. 

This battle has become so fixed in the minds of men 
because it was the occasion of so much progress on the 
part of the race. 

History, indeed, consists of a series of stages each 
more favorable to knowledge than the preceding, the 
Egyptian, the Judean, the Athenian, the Roman, the 
Patristic, the Mediaeval, the Revival, and the Modern. 

To glance now at the history of individuals, the 
estimation in which great men are held we may explain 
on the ground that knowledge is the end of our exist- 
ence, great men being, indeed, but examples of what 
everybody should be. 

That the notion of the Messiahship was in the minds 



354 DESTINY 

of men, thousands of years before Christianity, Gentiles 
as well as Jews, shows that they had discovered the end 
of life to be spirituality. There is in us, indeed, what 
may be called a disadvantageous state of mind, a 
spiritual imperfection fraught with baleful results which 
it behooves us to be rid of ; the extent to which one per- 
fects himself spiritually, therefore, makes his greatness. 
We have accordingly the idea of redemption, the idea 
of deliverance from our imperfection, an idea which any- 
one anywhere may have. Whatever else our Saviour 
stands for, he at least stands for all we ought to attain 
to, being in all things our pattern. 

When everybody reaches perfection of mind, the per- 
fection of society obtains. When everybody possesses 
the truth, the bounds of progress are arrived at. This 
is our sure ground for believing in a millennium. 
Whatever else it may be it is a time in which the general- 
ity of mankind reaches perfection, theoretically, therefore, 
a time in which everybody reaches perfection. 

Zoroaster, though he is believed to have lived as long 
ago as Moses, yet foretold the coming of such a time, 
being able to do so because he perceived the necessity 
that the race get the truth. 

Our Saviour represents to us absolute perfection, but 
there are a great many men who approximately represent 
perfection, conspicuous among them Homer, Job, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, 
Hegel, Cicero, Plutarch, Macaulay, Victor Hugo. 

Homer is worthy, not because he wrote the Iliad, but 
because he knew what to write. He and the rest are 
examples to us because they did what we ought to do, 
approximately at least, attained the truth. 



DESTINY 355 

The fame of Buddha shows that spirituahty is the end 
for which we came into the flesh, he being among the 
greatest apostles of knowledge that the world has ever 
known. About five hundred years before the birth of 
Christ, he was living in the village of Kapilavastu, north- 
ward of Benares, where he had a view of the Himalayas 
rising to imprint themselves on the blue. He was a 
prince, living in a palace surrounded by every luxury, 
had, in short, all the gifts of secularity — riches, honor, 
and power — but he awoke one night, his mind aroused, 
it is said, as if his house were on fire. The thought had 
taken irresistible hold of him that he must do something 
to deliver humanity from its misery. He had in fact 
the day before seen the most loathsome examples of it, 
beggary, disease, and death. Mounting therefore his 
horse, he rode away from his palace and its luxury, 
freely abandoning all secularity to the end that he might 
secure salvation for men, rode away into the desert and 
its desolation. As he thus rode away from his palace, 
might seem to have been heard the deafening applause 
of after ages, the acclaims of the millions who should yet 
be blest on account of what he was then doing. Faint- 
ing from continual fasting, it was forcibly impressed 
upon him that he could never deliver mankind from 
their sorrows merely by starving himself. Going a dis- 
tance farther, he seated himself under a tree, where at 
last it dawned upon him that what made all the trouble 
with men was their ignorance. There are trees in the 
world now growing which have been derived, it is said, 
from that under which he had his momentous revela- 
tion, trees held sacred by mankind, because of the ulti- 
mate truth which he attained to under the branches of 



35^ DESTINY 

the original one. Asked where he was going he replied : 
'■ To Benares, there to give light to those enshrouded in 
darkness, and to open the gates of immortality to men. 
For now," said he, " I only live to be the prophet of 
perfect truth." Establishing, as Wesley did after him, 
an itinerary, he began to preach salvation through knowl- 
edge. 

Whatsoever imperfections there may have been in his 
teaching, and it is acknowledged that there were such, 
at least he was Christian to this extent, that he gave 
primacy to the kingdom of heaven and relegated to a 
subsidiary position secularity. He was right also in that 
he set perfect knowledge as the condition of perfect 
spirituality. For how, indeed, shall a man properly per- 
form that of which he knows nothing, how properly per- 
form that of which he does not know enough ? 

The case of Fichte is even more remarkable, since by 
showing his countrymen that knowledge is the end of 
life, he thereby induced them totally to change for the 
better their affairs. Prussia was wholly given up to 
secularity, no spiritual fitness was required for office, the 
schools also were inconceivably bad. The outcome was 
that nobody cared anything for his country. Napoleon, 
therefore, in overthrowing German power at Jena was 
hailed as a sort of deliverer, as indeed he really was. It 
was then that Fichte recalled men's minds to first prin- 
ciples, told them in effect that a man's life consisteth not 
in the abundance of things which he possesseth, that the 
end of humanity is to attain wisdom. Things then 
became changed, the principle that every position of 
honor and emolument shall depend on education was 
made supreme. The present Germany, as the exponent 



DESTINY 357 

of science is the result, the mighty power for progress. 
Fitting therefore, is the inscription which the traveler 
now reads over the grave of Fichte, " Those who turn 
many to the truth shall shine on as the stars forever and 
ever." 

At Konigsberg, Kant rests in a chapel by himself, to 
the side of which is the great cathedral in which rest the 
dukes and princes. Fain would the dukes and princes 
have him come over to them that he might add a drop of 
fame to theirs, fain would they have him sent to their 
posterity that it come not into the place in which they are. 
Kant, indeed, was the son of a humble strap-cutter, yet, 
because of his intellectuality, his fame is greater than 
that of kings. 

At Ratisbon there is what is called a temple of fame, 
built after the fashion of the Parthenon, the depository 
of the statues of the great men of Germany. It was the 
happy thought of Pope that there exists on this plan a 
much larger temple in which are contained the statues of 
the great men of all time. He represents that there are 
six statues, however, given a far more conspicuous place 
in the temple than the rest, that of Homer, that of Virgil, 
that of Pindar, that of Horace, that of Aristotle, and 
that of Cicero. These statues are placed around the 
throne of fame itself directly beneath the dome of the 
temple. They are raised above that of fame. The re- 
flections of the light from the gems in the statue of fame 
form a rainbow over the heads of the six statues, min- 
gled rays of emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and ambers. 
Here we have an allegorical representation of the fact 
that the natural destiny of man is intellectual perfection, 
men of the greatest knowledge having the greatest fame. 



358 DESTINY 

If the end of the human mind is in fact not knowledge, 
why then should we not have clowns represented as hav- 
ing attained the glorified state, statues, for instance, of 
such as dug the grave of Ophelia placed beneath the 
dome of the temple of fame? Why should we not have 
a choir chanting their praises, " Such be the examples of 
men for aye ? " 

We might, of course, imagine a burlesque temple of 
fame, those whose statues are in it being examples of 
what nobody should become. Seneca seems to have had 
the main idea of such a thing in mind when he said of 
Tiberius that nature brought him forth to show what 
folly and stupidity can accomplish. 

We may even look upon a rampant blackguard as a 
sort of burlesque Saviour of the world, he representing 
about everything which nobody should be. 

Many a man is preaching the gospel very effectively, 
although the thought of his doing so is most remote from 
him. Ever does he remind us not to be what he is, such 
is the irony of fate. 

As everybody has in himself the standard of perfection 
by which he is under obligation to know what the truth 
of things is, it follows that by means of this standard, 
we are entitled to ascend the judgment throne of the 
world and to pronounce the verdict. Anybody in fact 
may follow the example of Dante. 

The judgment will be of the quick and of the dead, 
those still inhabiting the earth and those deceased. We 
need mention only such as against whom the judgment is. 

Respecting the living, our judgment will have to be 
condemnatory of those who now living in Greece have 
yet never heard of Demosthenes, condemnatory of 



DESTINY 359 

those who are now hving in Konigsberg, yet do 
not exactly know what Kant taught. We shall have 
to condemn those who would rather put children out 
to hire than send them to school, thinking it profit- 
able at the loss of the soul to gain a mere pittance. We 
shall have to condemn those who act as if they were born 
into the world for no other purpose than to repair old 
wagons or to mend crockery, unmindful what Burritt 
accomplished at the blacksmith's forge. We shall have 
to condemn those who care not whether Shakespeare 
meant to represent Hamlet as crazy or rather as crafty, 
whether gravitation vary inversely as the square or 
rather as the cube of the distance. We shall have to 
condemn those who are swayed by Mumbo Jumbo 
merely, frivolous, incapable of considering anything 
seriously, always borne about on the winds of opinion. 
We shall have to condemn those who think they have 
made some high attainment, because forsooth they pos- 
sess a hundred suits of raiment, whereas Hawthorne had 
but two or three and Bonaparte at times not more than 
one. 

Coming to the dead, we shall have to condemn all those 
of past ages who were savages or barbarians, they never 
having beheld the glorious dawn of self-consciousness. 
We shall have to condemn all the hosts of the dead who 
were the worshipers of mediocrity or the devotees of 
immediate good. Of those who burned the Alexandrian 
library, let the name be hooted and hissed adown the 
corridors of time, to those who tried to stop the mouth 
of Galileo, be it known they never have forgiveness. 



CHAPTER XVI 

ORIGIN 

The question of the origin of the human mind is dis- 
posed of to the extent we can show it had no origin. 
This question manifestly has in it the question of im- 
mortahty. For if the mind had no origin it exists 
independent of time. It will not end. 

The argument for the eternity of the mind may be 
embraced under three heads — physical, moral and bio- 
logical, accordingly as we have a view to matter, to mind, 
or to life. 

The argument from matter itself consists of two parts, 
first that matter is without origin, secondly that it has 
resemblance to mind. 

The natural eternity of matter is implied in what we 
observe of it. The things of which material nature is 
composed, as for example, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, 
and carbon continue to be the same. 

Hydrogen may be put into a vessel and left there in 
the gaseous state, yet after years it will unite with oxy- 
gen to form water, a proof that all through those years 
it has been the same thing. Hydrogen reaches back 
into the past, being found in the ancient suns of the 
milky way, hydrogen reaches forward into the future, 
being about to be in the oceans that shall be formed. 
Hydrogen may have wandered the heavens for untold 
ages in a meteor, yet for all that time it has been 
hydrogen. 

360 



ORIGIN 361 

Again, we live in a great sea of nitrogen, the air which 
we breathe being this together with a mixture of oxygen 
and gaseous carbon. The nitrogen which forms part 
of our flesh to-day was a few days ago in the flesh of an 
ox, a few days before in the grass that the ox ate. 
When hair is burnt, there is always the same smell from 
it because the nitrogen in it is but one and the same thing 
always. The only wrinkles on the brow of nitrogen are 
those which appear in the spectrum and those are always 
the same, a proof that time did not write them there. 

Still again, the very same oxygen will combine with 
every known simple substance, fluorine excepted, being, 
as it is, nothing but oxygen. Oxygen has taken part in 
every fire kindled, both before and since the conflagra- 
tion of Troy, and has been able to do so on account of 
what it is. The very same oxygen of the earth has sup- 
ported all the animals which have lived upon the earth. 
The breath which a man draws into his lungs is that 
which a bear once inhaled. 

Moreover, when we snufif a lamp-wick, we gaze on a 
piece of carbon which is just the same as it was when 
the builders of Solomon's temple were hewing out the 
timbers in the woods, the very same to be when the 
millennium dawns. The same carbon is at one time a 
part of wood, at another a part of bone, at still another 
a part of hair, yet is the same. 

Wherefore hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon 
being always the same, the things of which they are com- 
posed must always be the same. Any one of these, 
hydrogen for example, we may, to be sure, conceive to 
be changing but only in the sense that like things replace 
like. 



« 



362 ORIGIN 

- Our bodies are for the most part composed of hydro- 
gen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, though they contain 
small quantities of many other things. Whatsoever they 
contain, however, is of the nature of hydrogen, of nitro- 
gen, of oxygen, and of carbon, so far as the question of 
change is concerned, the atoms of everything being ever 
the same. 

Not only is this thought to be so from observation but 
follows from the law of causality, it being impossible that 
like combinations of things should produce like effects 
unless those things were constant in their natures. It 
was foretold, for example, more than a hundred years 
beforehand that a great eclipse of the sun would occur 
on a certain day, at a certain moment, but how could 
this have been done unless all the particles of matter be 
unchangeable in their actions? 

Experiments, moreover, have been made, demonstrat- 
ing what is called the conservation of energy, the un- 
changeability of matter. 

And the unchangeability of matter, be it kept in mind, 
means that matter had no origin in time, time having no 
relevancy to its atoms. 

The argument from the eternity of matter to that of 
mind is analogical, we conclude that mind is eternal from 
its similarity to matter. 

The grounds of the similarity of mind to matter may, 
for the purposes in hand, be comprised under three 
separate heads, first that both mind and matter partici- 
pate in existence, secondly that they are connected with 
each other in the human body, and thirdly that matter 
being infinitely divisible is therefore immaterial. 

Some importance even must attach to the first ground, 



ORIGIN 363 

namely, the likeness of mind and matter, in the bare fact 
that each exists, the ground upon which Spinoza took 
his stand. 

The second ground of similarity between mind and 
matter, namely their connection with each other in the 
human body, manifestly falls under two heads, first the 
action of matter on mind and secondly the action of 
mind on matter, the first being exemplified in sensation, 
the second in volition. 

The mind has in sensation intimations of matter 
through sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, 

A person standing at Niagara Falls has the conscious- 
ness that the waters are rolling over that wall of rocks, 
the water so affecting his mind as to show that the 
water is not at variance with it. As one listens to the 
moaning of the wind, he is made to realize that wind is 
not so much at enmity with mind as not to be on speak- 
ing terms with it. If one draws the hand over a piece 
of velvet, he is made aware of its smoothness, velvet not 
being entirely out of sorts with mind. If one comes into 
a room where there is perfume, no sooner does he enter 
than the perfume bids him welcome, showing there is an 
affiliation between it and mind. Vanilla, placed in the 
mouth, occasions in us a sense of pleasure, evincing that 
it is not altogether opposite in nature to mind. 

How all this can be, unless there is some similarity 
between mind and matter, it were impossible to con- 
ceive. 

We have in fact, still much to learn from Thales who 
twenty-five hundred years ago maintained that all things 
are made out of water — not that all things are made out 
of water, though a great many of them are — but that all 



364 • ORIGIN 

things are so connected, the one with the others, as to 
show they must all somehow participate in a common 
nature. 

Volition shows mind actually affecting matter, mind, 
as strange as it may seem, impressing on matter its ideas. 

Do we conclude at this moment to walk, immediately 
do our feet move, a state of the body being in this way 
made by a state of the mind, showing that the mind has 
with the things of the body something in common. The 
army of Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea by 
continuing to put one foot before the other. All that 
mass of matter of which his army was composed was 
transported from the interior of Georgia to the seacoast, 
merely by the ideas which were in the heads of the men. 
The men were mental motors, if the expression be 
allowed. 

Do we conclude at this moment to handle something, 
immediately do our hands move, a state of the body 
being in this way made by a state of the mind, showing 
that the mind has with the things of the body somewhat 
in common. Long ago the minds of certain men caused 
their hands to build temples. The mind of Phidias, set- 
ting his hands in motion, removed chip after chip from a 
great block of marble, till the sculptured forms which 
once adorned the Parthenon stood forth. The hands of 
Raphael were by his mind made to put paints on a can- 
vas in such a way as that those paints enrapture the 
mind of every beholder, his mind actually having an 
effect on the paints. Mozart's mind affecting his fingers, 
and through them the piano, he made music which filled 
the minds of his hearers with visions of a brighter world. 
The scribes of Judea, making the pen subject to the 



ORIGIN 365 

mind, through the hand wrote the parchments which 
have preserved for us the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the 
Prophecies. How it is that mind can so act on matter 
as to mould it to its uses, except on the supposition that 
mind has somewhat in common with matter, it were 
impossible to say. 

The remaining ground of similarity between mind and 
matter is that derived from the infinite divisibility of 
things. 

The material universe consists of small particles of 
matter, moving, as we suppose, in a sea of ether. What 
may be the size of these particles even has in some cases 
been made out, the density of a gas depending on it. 
Many billions of them, it is found, are crowded within 
the space of a single cubic inch. But these particles 
themselves, what of them? Are they made up of others 
and those still of others and so on without end? 

As the space which any piece of matter occupies must 
be infinitely divisible, it follows that the piece of matter 
itself in that space exists infinitely divisible — nay more, 
that the piece of matter exists in the space infinitely 
divided, consists in fact of an infinite number of parts. 

Each of those parts is infinitely small, that is to say, 
is a point of force merely and does not occupy any space, 
is in short what is called an atom. 

It is not difficult at all to conceive that matter is com- 
posed of forces having no extensity. For on this sup- 
position, one of these forces is at every point of space, 
the combined effect of them having to us the appearance 
of things spread out, such as the bodies of which we are 
sensible, though, in truth, the things, which we see, be 
composed of things which do not appear. 



366 ORIGIN 

We know that things which can be seen only under 
the glass, yet when combined with others of the same 
kind can easily be observed with the naked eye, not the 
single things of course, but their united effects, whence 
it is plain that things which we see may be made up of 
things invisible. 

For all that appears to the contrary, therefore, matter 
is similar to mind in being immaterial. The point in 
which it was supposed that there was complete difference 
between mind and matter, mind having no extension in 
space, matter having such extension, vanishes altogether. 

It turns out that it is only the combinations of matter 
which occupy space, not matter itself, just as it is only 
the combinations of matter that occupy time, not matter 
itself. 

This conclusion, as was said, depends on the infinite 
divisibility of space, a thing which requires a more 
extended consideration. 

If we suppose, for example, a man to travel from one 
place to another, it is plain he must first go half the dis- 
tance, then half the remaining distance, and so on, 
having continually to bisect a line, so to say. As long 
then as the halvings which he makes of distances are 
finite, he will not reach the point for which he set out, 
there always being left over an undivided remainder. 
If, however, the number of halvings which he makes, of 
distances, be infinite, he will reach the point for which 
he started. For in that case, the last bisection will result 
in two points merely, these having position but no 
extension. 

This result agrees with the proof which algebra fur- 
nishes. Zero multiplied by infinity equals anything. 



ORIGIN 367 

The zero is here, the point without extension, the infinity, 
the number of divisions of the Hne, the product of the 
two, the whole Hne which was to be divided. 

We observe also from certain algebraic series that an 
infinite number of small quantities actually constitutes a 
definite quantity, for example, the geometric series, I, 
^, ^, and so on, continued to infinity, it is established, 
an algebraic grounds, exactly equals the number i (or 
unity). 

If it be asked how space can be divided into an infinity 
of parts in a finite time, the answer of Aristotle is that 
any time, like any space, consists of an infinite number 
of parts. We, therefore, divide the time, at the same 
time that we divide the distance. 

Moreover, if space were not infinitely divisible, the 
contention of Zeno would be correct, that motion is 
impossible. 

Zeno, who lived at Elea, an Italian town, four hun- 
dred years before the birth of Christ, proposed among 
other puzzles wherewith to bother the brains of men 
that one which is called Achilles and the tortoise. 
Achilles travels fast, the tortoise slow, yet if the tortoise 
has the start, Achilles can never overtake him, this being 
the paradox. The proof which Zeno gave was this. 
Achilles to reach the point where the tortoise starts from 
must first go half the distance thereto, then half the 
remainder, and so on. A remainder always being left 
over, it is plain he will never come up to the point. 
On the same principle it follows, if space be not ulti- 
mately divisible into points, no progress of a body can 
be made from one position to another; what is the same 
thing-, niQtion is impossible. 



3^8 ORIGIN 

"Space, however, being actually divisible into points, 
the last remainder in the infinite division of a line, as 
was said, is nothing at all, whence the possibility of 
motion. 

Furthermore, as motion actually does take place, space 
is proved to be infinitely divisible by reductio ad 
absurdum. 

If it be objected that, on these principles, space must 
in the last resort consist of what is not space, being 
ultimately composed of points having position merely but 
no extension, what we fail to consider is that space does 
not exist apart from things, but is only the condition 
of their combination. 

Thus far the attempt has been made to argue the 
eternity of mind from that of matter, but we come now 
to the second point, the attempt to argue the eternity of 
mind from the nature of mind itself. 

What is of importance here is the proposed reconcilia- 
tion between the dogma of predestination and that of 
free will. 

We find that our actions are governed by habit, inas- 
much as we always make a decision on the strength of 
some motive, that motive too depending on our former 
manner of life. Kant declares that, if we knew all about 
a man, we could foretell his actions with as much cer- 
tainty as we can foretell the occurrence of an eclipse. 
Knowing men no better than we do, we yet predict rea- 
sonably well how each will act. For example, a debt 
may not be collectible of a man at law, yet we do not 
hesitate to lend the man money; the fact that we do not, 
it is said, shows our faith in predestination, we reason- 
ing that the man's habits are such as to fix beforehand 
his actions. 



ORIGIN 369 

It has been observed by everybody that one fault goes 
back to another. We find, for instance, that a thieving 
propensity arises from covetousness, covetousness from 
envy, envy from vanity, vanity from stupidity, stupidity 
from laziness, laziness from slovenliness, and slovenli- 
ness from inaccuracy. 

But in tracing back the genealogy of a man's vices, 
and we may say the same of his virtues, we come at last 
to the disposition with which the man was born. 

Are we, then, responsible for the circumstances under 
which we are born ? If we are not responsible for them, 
why should we be rewarded or punished for having been 
born as we were ? 

Let not this point be taken lightly. For there is no 
doubt that to be subject to some of the horrors which 
Dante depicts would be a less ill than it is to be bom 
under such circumstances as many a man is born under, 
while, on the other hand, to attain the paradise of 
Mahomet would be a less felicity than it is to be born 
under such circumstances as many another man is born 
under. 

We are confronted, then, says Kant, by the seeming 
contradiction that whereas our actions are predestined, 
we yet are responsible for them. 

To explain this seeming contradiction, our ancestors 
hit upon the dogma known as the transmigration of souls. 

It was held that everybody who is in a particular con- 
dition of life, as, indeed, everybody is, is not living in 
this world for the first time, but has lived in it untold 
times before. When anybody is born, it was said that 
he is merely resurrected from the dead, this world and 
the next being right here in our midst, or to be more 



Zl'^ ORIGIN 

precise, we ourselves are in what was once to us the 
next world. We who are now living are, according to 
this theory, in process of judgment for what we did 
when we lived the life before this. Is a man a beggar, 
going from place to place, having but little to eat, and 
nowhere to lay his head, it was held that he must have 
done somewhat bad in a former life, just as he must 
have done somewhat good, if he is blest with every com- 
fort and convenience. Everybody, it was said, is mak- 
ing his way to future bliss just to the extent that he is 
overcoming the ill effects of what he did in former lives. 
Some time, if he perseveres, he will be born into a state 
of society and of personal disposition which we are wont 
to designate as heaven. His progress to such a state is 
slow on account of the law of consequences whereby 
every condition is bound up in other conditions, whence 
from the predicament in which he is, he can extricate 
himself only through time. What will finally deliver 
him from every woe is perfect knowledge, the compre- 
hension of truth as it is in itself, the which, till he attain, 
he is doomed to the treadmill of his trials. Why we 
are still in an imperfect state of existence, though having 
been born and reborn from time immemorial, was ex- 
plained on the principle that everything repeats itself. 
For, when after ages of toil, one has at last reached 
perfection, he does not forever remain in it, but in time 
lapses out of it. Everybody, it was said, is going an 
everlasting round which repeats itself, if not in all its 
details, at least substantially. Some make this round 
quickly, others slowly, some quickly once but slowly 
again. Some there are who have lingered in the world 
of bliss so long as may seem eternity, others having 



ORIGIN 371 

been an equal time at some other stage. The principles 
held were that the universe is one of diversity on the 
one hand and one of permanence on the other, worlds all 
the time arising, all the time disappearing, the general 
character of them, however, persisting. Every particle 
of existence, it was said, whether water, stone, or what 
not is a soul capable of making the general round, want- 
ing only the opportunity. The greatest mind in fact 
might once have been an atom helping to make the field 
fertile, the greatest mind might again be such an atom. 
It was indeed thought that in the ages of time, the length 
of which it is impossible to compute, every particle of 
being does actually make the whole circuit of possibility, 
there having to be an exchange of services among things, 
a human soul, for example, when its turn comes, becom- 
ing an atom of lamp-black to allow an atom of lamp- 
black to become a human soul. All things, it was 
believed, are one in their nature, diversity arising out of 
the combinations. At any rate, howsoever these things 
be, each of us, it was said, has gone through the states 
of existence times without number and is to-day at some 
definite point in the great circle of existence having a 
bodily constitution befitting his character. For the kind 
of character a person has, it was believed, determines 
the condition in which he is born, he virtually choosing 
all the circumstances of his birth, his parentage, and 
the like. 

This is the famous doctrine of metempsychosis, a 
doctrine which has without doubt been the means of en- 
lightening thousands, bringing forcibly before the mind, 
as it does, the dependence of one's condition on his 
actions, but it will be noticed that, taking the theory lit- 



372 ORIGIN 

eraHy, we never get any nearer to the source of the diffi- 
culty, no matter how far we go back in time, the one 
answer made to the question why anything is as it is 
being always this, "what the person did before." 

The theory of transmigration, therefore, is inadequate 
to solve the mystery of evil, since by it we are put to 
unraveling a series the end of which does not appear. 

The solution of the difficulty proposed by Kant, how- 
ever, is not open to this objection. Each of us, accord- 
ing to the theory which he propounded, made a free-will 
choice from all eternity of everything which befalls him 
in life, time, itself, originating only in connection with 
his choice. 

As there was nothing before this choice, we cannot 
say that the choice was predestined, there was not time 
in which the choice of anybody from eternity was made. 

All our actions, then, says Kant, are predestinated, as 
each of them is the result of what stands before it in 
time, but we are the ones who predestinated them, hav- 
ing chosen those actions as a whole from all eternity. 

As, then, the supposition that the mind of man was 
created from eternity clears up the seeming contradic- 
tion between predestination and free will, the supposi- 
tion that the mind of man was created from eternity 
gains somewhat plausibility. 

But did not the deity, it will be asked, create matter 
and mind by the word of his power? 

Doubtless he did, but not. in time, seeing that he made 
time as much as he made anything else. We cannot, 
for example, say that time was made before matter was, 
since no time being in existence but as it was made, no 
date can be assigned to the creation of time, all dates 



ORIGIN 373 

manifestly having to be in time. Neither can we say 
that matter was made subsequently to the making of 
time, since there being no date from which to reckon 
the creation of time, it is absurd to speak of anything as 
being made after time was. As time was made along 
with matter and mind, matter and mind did not orig- 
inate in time, but only with time. The notions of before 
and after are merely notions of time and are without 
application to the creation, since the creator, inhabiting 
eternity, made things not inside but outside time. The 
expression " made out of nothing " has not a temporal 
but only a logical significance, meaning merely that 
things are eternally existent alone through the Supreme. 

We are not to think that God makes worlds as the 
artisan makes stools. God creates the materials of 
which things are formed, the artisan merely shapes them. 
The arising and disappearing of worlds in particular 
places is but a question of composition and decomposi- 
tion, not to be confounded with that of the original 
creation. " In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth," that is to say those heavens and that 
earth which we now behold. These indeed, began to 
exist, but not the things of which they are made. The 
things of which they are made go back to other worlds 
and these to others and so on, as far back as we are 
pleased to go, and even farther. 

Time, space, and substance are in deity, not deity in 
them. Deity, as the confessions of our faiths declare is 
without variableness or shadow of turning, without body, 
passions, or parts. On this point are agreed Brahmin- 
ists, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, 
three-fourths or more of all the inhabitants of the earth. 



374 ORIGIN 

Certain small sects, however, hold to anthropomor- 
phism, imagining the creator to be possessed of body and 
to be in time, a notion of all ever held the crudest, con- 
ceived, as it is, as if the creator is subject to his own 
creation. 

Anthropomorphists, speaking of the creator as if he 
were a finite creature say, for instance, that they could 
not respect him, should he do so and so, forgetting that 
what he does is after the nature of mathematics. What 
they say is, in fact, the same as if they should maintain 
they cannot respect him because he has made it farther 
round a circle than through the diameter, this sometimes 
being an inconvenience. 

The Deity is the Supreme power on which everything 
depends. It is only figuratively that we can speak of 
this being as we would of a finite one. 

The proof that mind and matter are eternal plainly 
enough depends on the assumption that something can- 
not come out of nothing, in other words, it depends on 
the granting of an axiom. The axiom that something 
cannot come out of nothing is the same as what is known 
as the law of identity, namely that a thing is always 
itself, never anything else. 

Without the truth of this law of identity the other 
laws of thought would not hold, to wit, the law of con- 
tradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of 
sufficient reason, the latter being also known as the law 
of causality. 

Suppose that something could come out of nothing, a 
thing could, on that hypothesis, be and not be at the 
same point of time; it would be impossible also to say 
that a thing must either be or not be, since it might be 



ORIGIN 375 

both existent and non-existent at the same moment. 
The law of causaHty would not hold, since subsequent 
conditions of things would not necessarily depend on 
their previous conditions. 

Suppose that something might become nothing, all the 
laws of thought would likewise fail. 

We may argue, therefore, that as all conclusions what- 
soever depend on the truth of the laws of thought and 
as these laws, without exception, depend on the prin- 
ciple that something cannot come out of nothing, either 
no conclusions of any kind are certain or else matter and 
mind were created from eternity. 

Causality is regarded as the great principle of nature, 
that like combinations produce like results. Why they 
should do so, however, is because the things combined 
have unchangeability, are always the same. Like com- 
binations of hydrogen and oxygen would not always give 
the same effects, unless hydrogen were always just 
exactly hydrogen, oxygen always just exactly oxygen. 
If the law of identity holds, namely, that every atom 
is always itself, never anything else, then, it is plain to 
see that the law of causality must hold also. 

We might, indeed, as well say that the axioms of 
mathematics do not hold as to say that something can 
come out of nothing. If the whole were not greater 
than any of its parts, then by merely entering the hall 
of a house, we might enter all the rooms. But what 
more certainty is there that the whole is greater than 
any of its parts than there is that something cannot come 
out of nothing? 

Nothing is so plain, of course, that somebody may not 
have called it in question, the truth of axioms being no 



37^ ORIGIN 

Sextus Empericus, who lived two hundred and forty 
years subsequent to our Saviour's birth or thereabouts, 
wrote in Greek a still surviving book, one part of which 
labors to show that no reliance can be placed on mathe- 
matics. Ever since his day, however, people have con- 
tinued to do business by means of arithmetic and to 
trust the titles of their lands to geometry, just as though 
he had never written a word. Sextus himself, who was 
a physician, it is not to be doubted made out his bills on 
principles of arithmetic, charging for example, if he had 
made six visits more than if he had made but three. It 
is hardly possible that he could have been persuaded to 
take four dollars for six visits at a dollar a visit, on 
the ground that the multiplication table is false ! 

Sextus argued that axioms are unprovable, because 
all attempts to prove them must assume that they are 
true, an objection, however, which in the opinion of many 
will amount to a demonstration of their truth. Kant, 
indeed, has shown that the human mind is of such a 
nature as that it has existence only, provided the axioms 
be true, the axioms being implied in its very nature, 
whence, it would seem, we have here a proof of the 
axioms by reductio ad absurdum. 

What on this theory would be meant by the self-evi- 
dence of the axioms would be no more than that the 
proof of the axioms is easy. 

We are all familiar with the question, " Who was the 
father of the Zebedee children ? " Who, indeed, he was, 
is, doubtless, self-evident, yet to have it clear in the 
mind makes a little demand on thought. It was once 
asked of a man, " How many years of Sundays there 
are in seventy years," and forthwith he began to enter 



ORIGIN 377 

on a laborious calculation to find how many there might 
be, not having stopped to reflect that one-seventh of the 
time is on general principles Sundays. Of a similar 
nature is the question, " How many odd numbers there 
are in a billion ? " It would take a long time to count 
them, perhaps nobody ever has or ever will count them, 
yet is it evident, on thinking, that in a billion there is 
just half a billion odd numbers. Of the same nature is 
the truth that something cannot come out of nothing, 
it is evident on a little thinking, consequently said to be 
self-evident. 

The question of the origin of the human mind having 
now been considered from the point of view of matter 
and from the point of view of mind, it remains to con- 
sider it from the point of view of both matter and mind 
taken together; in other words it remains to consider 
the origin of the human mind from the point of view 
of living organisms. 

Dante, as we are aware, represents that he saw men, 
heard them speak, even, the bodies of whom were not 
like ours but were veritable trees of the forest. Let us 
then suppose that a race of men answering to this de- 
scription actually exists on the earth, what are the con- 
clusions to which we must come respecting it? 

It is recalled by a man that in his boyhood, there was 
along the road which led out from his father's house, a 
row of locust trees. Supposing then that these trees had 
been the bodies of men, what then? Locust trees send 
out under the ground runners from which new trees 
sprout up and grow, as, indeed, everybody must have 
observed. If, then, we suppose that the trees along the 
road were human beings, each of them having an active, 



378 ORIGIN 

sensitive, conscious mind, we must suppose that the new 
trees sprouting up from the runners of the old ones were 
new men and women come upon earth. 

Manifestly the tender shoots would be boys and girls, 
but with a lapse of time would wax into manhood and 
womanhood. When, then, a new man of a tree sprouted 
up from the runner of an old one, and we might ask 
the same question respecting a new woman of a tree, 
where should we say that this man or this woman came 
from? 

It would, of course, be admitted that the hydrogen, 
nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon of which the visible tree 
springing up from the ground was made, came from the 
air, water, and mineral of the earth, the atoms of which 
from age to age change not, but whence should we say 
that the mind itself of the tree came? 

We have supposed, it will be remembered, that the 
tree newly sprouting up from the runner of the old one 
was veritably a human being, having like ourselves ideas, 
volitions, and feelings, the same as Dante imagined his 
trees to have. 

When, then, a new tree sprouted up from the runner 
of an old one, would it be proper to say that its mind 
came out of nothing, never having before that time had 
any existence at all? 

It is one of those things which are said to be self- 
evident that something cannot come out of nothing, to 
say that something can come out of nothing being 
equivalent to saying that what is not, exists. 

Does anybody pretend that this is a subject beyond his 
comprehension, let him be warned to what he is commit- 
ting himself. He in effect says that he does not under- 



ORIGIN 379 

stand how the non-existence of a thing precludes its 
existence. 

We are speaking, it is proper to observe, of ultimate 
realities, those that cannot be analyzed into any others, 
not of things compounded out of these. 

When, then, a person who holds the nature of first 
truths to be beyond his comprehension, orders his din- 
ner at a restaurant, the waiter shall place nothing before 
him, but merely make an appeal to his agnosticism, " For 
all he knows the non-existence of the atoms which might 
compose his dinner is the same as their existence ! " 

It has been set down to the credit of Hegel that he 
was willing to accept, without any mental reservations, 
whatsoever follows inevitably from general principles, 
launching his skiff on the sea of thought regardless as 
to what shores it might be wafted, an attitude of mind 
which we may well emulate. 

If, then, trees were men having minds like our own, 
we should have to suppose that, when a tree sprouted 
up, the mind of it at the same time emerged from the 
solitudes of eternity, being in fact obliged to grant this 
or to concede that nothing may become something. 

Should anyone wonder why this example from trees 
has been urged, he should be reminded that in the sea 
animals in the form of trees actually do exist, so that 
Dante's idea is far from being a mere fiction. 

Such animals grow fast to the earth like trees and 
bushes, being, indeed, often mistaken for forms of vege- 
tation, some of them even blossoming, yet are they actu- 
ally possessed of minds, as we, ourselves, strange as this 
may seem. 

These animals are, for instance, certain corals of which 



380 ORIGIN 

there are many varieties in the sea. From any one of 
these animals, others of like nature sprout up and grow. 

We have, therefore, actual examples in the world 
which are but little removed from the example of the 
locust trees. 

When, then, a new animal of this kind sprouts up, as 
indeed, multitudes of them do, the question meets us, 
"Where does its mind come from?" 

Is not the old body from which the new body sprouts 
up merely the means by which a certain mind gets organs 
for the accomplishment of its purposes? Has not, in 
fact, the mind of the new body been existing from eter- 
nity, ready at any time to enter the flesh? 

If the hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon which 
the machinery of life organizes into the new body be of 
such a nature as that the atoms of the same have pre- 
served each its identity from eternity, what precludes the 
possibility that the mind of the new body may likewise 
have been able to preserve its identity from eternity? 

The coming into existence of animals through sub- 
division shows the same principle as appears in branch- 
ing. 

. The so-called starfishes, animals found in the sea 
growing much like plants, devour the bait which fisher- 
men put upon their hooks. Often, drawing up star- 
fishes which have got fast to the hooks, the fishermen 
in a rage tear them to pieces and throw the pieces back 
into the water, thinking thus that they have destroyed 
the starfishes. The truth is, however, that each of the 
pieces thrown back becomes an animal like the one which 
was torn to pieces, so that the fishermen do but multiply 
the evil which they seek to lessen. 



ORIGIN 381 

Here it is plain the mind of each of the new animals 
existed previously to the animals themselves, minds being 
scattered, so to say, all through the body of the original 
starfish. 

Many an animal, it is true, makes its entrance on 
earthly life grov^ing from some sort of an egg. The 
machinery of an egg, however, it is proved, differs not 
in principle from the machinery of a branch, so that in 
the case of an animal growing from an egg we have 
involved just the same thing which is involved in the case 
of an animal growing from a branch. It is, in fact, just 
the same as if an animal that grows from an egg sprouts 
up from some portion of another animal. 

The question, therefore, which it was possible to ask 
about every animal springing up from a branch of 
another, it is possible to ask about every animal growing 
out. of an egg, " Where does its mind come from? " 

It is admitted that the materials of its body come from 
the water, air, and earth, those materials being in the 
last analysis atoms, those atoms having no beginning of 
days or end of years, what is better said, existing 
altogether independent of time. 

Are we then reduced to such desperate straits as to 
be under the necessity of conceding that the mind of the 
animal in order to enter into alliance with the atoms of 
matter had to be changed out of nothing into something ? 

If it were possible that the mind of the animal from 
being nothing might on a sudden and to meet an emer- 
gency become something, it must possess a happier knack 
than any known to sleight-of-hand. 

When the body of a bird is formed in an egg of the 
nest, where, we may ask, does its mind come from? 



382 ORIGIN 

From nothing at all? Or like its body, from something 
at hand? 

If there were but two birds in the world, yet in the 
space of a few years there would be birds enough so 
that everybody could have one. 

Would the minds of these birds that should direct 
their songs and in their songs take delight, have all orig- 
inated out of the abyss of nothingness ? Either we must 
admit this or else grant that mind like matter is non- 
temporal in its nature. 

What a countless number of feathered creatures there 
are in the world not alone on the land, but also on the 
water, where the wing of the sea-gull never wearies! 
All those which now exist, however, are descendants of 
those which lived before them. The lives of most of 
them are short. Think then of the many generations of 
birds, what a vast number of minds have appeared on 
the earth in this shape! Whence did they come? Out 
of nothing or out of selfhood? 

The fish deposits a million of eggs in each of which 
there is a mind, this mind having either existed from 
eternity or having come out of nothing this very summer ! 

The young of the Paramecium numbers a quarter of a 
million, all hatched out in the brief space of a single 
month! Is it possible that the mind of each of these 
came out of nothing for the occasion? If we might 
think so, we must suppose that nothing has a prolixity 
beyond what it is possible to conceive! 

How innumerable are the creatures, visible and invis- 
ible, of appreciable size and infinitesimal which swim 
the seas or inhabit the dust of the earth, to say nothing 
about those on the land and in the water! Mind is a 



ORIGIN 383 

very important thing in the make-up of the world and 
may, therefore, well enough be of the nature of the other 
things in the world, existing as Spinoza would have 
said under the form of eternity. 

Beasts, such as horses, cattle, and sheep, indeed all 
beasts whatsoever, are no exception to the rule of 
propagation by means of eggs. We have, therefore, in 
regard to each one of them, as to any animal whatso- 
ever, originating from an egg, the pertinent question, 
*' Where its mind comes from? " 

The hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and the like 
of which the bodies of beasts are composed, it is granted 
do not come out of nothing. Why, then, should we 
suppose that the mind of a beast, the same too exhibiting 
so much intelligence and power, should once have been 
a mere nonentity ? 

We might better believe all the fables of the Koran, 
to make use of Bacon's expression. 

Should objection be raised that comparison has so 
often been instituted between the mere animal and the 
human mind, this objection can in some degree be miti- 
gated by the supposition that there are several kinds of 
minds just as there are several kinds of matter. 

Mind of a very low order it might be assumed is to 
be found in every part of an animal's body, every ani- 
mal on this hypothesis being a compound one, every cell 
in its body a veritable animal. 

We should have come to the point of view of Anax- 
agoras that all things consist of non-extensive potencies, 
mind among them that organizes things. 

At any rate the human mind is not more abased by 
having connection with animal mind than by having con- 
nection with matter itself. 



3^4 ORIGIN 

The animal nature of man being like that of beasts, 
no difference whatsoever being observable, the same 
principles of life must apply to men as apply to beasts. 
Could then a human being have got himself born, his 
mind we mean, unless he had been on hand to be born ? 

It is not claimed of course that the particular mind of 
an individual man has previous to his birth gone through 
a succession of states in time, but only that his mind, as 
such, is independent of time, originating from eternity. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Affection, kinds, 287; in family, 
287 ; friendship, 294 ; malevo- 
lence, 298 ; for animals, 302 ; for 
plants, 303 ; for places, 304 ; for 
relics, 308. 

Brain, 14, 15. 

Berkeley on perception, 39. 

Conception, field of, 121 ; inorganic 
world, 121 ; vegetable kingdom, 
129 ; animal kingdom, 132 ; util- 
ities, 134 ; religion, 140. 

Desire, satisfaction in animals, 261 ; 
in savages, 265 ; in civilized so- 
ciety, 269 ; in intellectual nations, 
274; in Persian Empire, 277 ; in 
Greece, 278 ; in Rome, 278 ; in 
Constantinople, 280 ; in the Mid- 
dle Ages, 280 ; as influenced by 
the Reformation, 281 ; in the 
Modem Time, 282. 

Dreaming, kinds, 46 ; ghosts, 47, 48, 
49 ; Hindoo miracles, 51 ; haunted 
houses, 50 ; spiritualism, 52 ; sig- 
nificance of dreams, 54 ; taken as 
realities, 57 ; physical means of 
dreaming, 57 ; hypnotism, 60, 65 ; 
self-induced dreams, 61 ; trance, 
64 ; somnambulism, 64 ; witch- 
craft, 66 ; insanity, 68 ; dancing 
mania, 69 ; were-wolves, 69 ; ef- 



fect of dreams on organic func- 
tions, 70 ; cures by dreams, 70, 
71 ; effect of dreams on inorganic 
matter, 71. 

Emotion, aesthetic, 312 ; raised by 
the sublime, 312 ; by the pathetic, 
316; by the ludicrous, 321; by 
the beautiful, 325 ; by the pic- 
turesque, 328 ; by the wonderful, 
332. 

Fosgate's dream, 39. 

Giddiness, organ of, 3. 

Hearing, Cowles' case, 11. 

Imagination, contrasted with con- 
ception, 97 ; six ways, 98 ; de- 
gree, 99 ; time, 100 ; size, loi ; 
properties, 108 ; causality, 112 ; 
composition, 116. 

Invention, mechanical, 213 ; chem- 
ical, 220 ; botanical, 223 ; zoolog- 
ical, 226 ; institutional, 228 ; ar- 
tistic, 234. 

Judgment, boy's, 145 ; about the 
earth improved, 146 ; Homer's 
world, 147 ; literary judgment im- 
proved, 150 ; learning to read, 
151 ; analytic and synthetic, 153 



385 



386 



INDEX 



about plants, 153 ; about animals, 
157 ; conflict of opinion, 159 ; 
about practical affairs, 160; about 
art, 163 ; Wagner's operas, 165 ; 
literary criticism, 166. 

Kant's categories, 98. 

Lotze's ideal realism, 41, 

Memory, all its conditions, 72 ; 
bodily condition affecting, 73 ; 
aptitude, 74 ; attention, 76 ; early 
impressions, 76 ; change of cir- 
cumstances, 77 ; rotation in, 77 ; 
mediumship, 78 ; obsession, 79 ; 
automatic writing, 79 ; interest, 
79 ; perspicuity, 79 ; vividness, 
79 ; position, 83 ; multiplicity, 
85 ; succession, 88 ; simultaneity, 
88 ; repetition, 89 ; relation of 
things, 91 ; association, 92 ; clas- 
sification, 93 ; cross-references, 94. 

Notation, decimal, 195. 

Origin, of the mind from eternity, 
360 ; argument from matter, 360 ; 
from mind, 368 ; from life, 377. 

Perception, qualities inferred, 23 ; 
space relations, 26 ; size of moon, 
30 ; atmosphere, 32 ; short dis- 
tances, 32 ; time relations, 33 ; 
motion, 33 ; Cheselden's case, 34 ; 
Caspar Hausar's perception, 36 ; 
Haslam's case, 36 ; theory of per- 
ception, 37 ; Berkeley on, 37 ; 
Schopenhauer on, 38 ; dreams, 
40 ; hearing, 42 ; taste and smell, 
42-43 ; of the blind, 43 ; touch, 
44 ; amputated limbs, 44, 45. 

Purpose, of the mind for existing, 
336 ; no ends but secularity and 
spirituality, 336 ; secularity de- 
pends on spirituality, 337 ; knowl- 



edge highest spiritual attainment, 
339 ; from history, 349. 

Query of Molyneux, 38. 

Reason, kinds of reasoning, 171 • 
equalization, 171 ; Pythagoras, 
171 ; circumstantial evidence, 178 ; 
decipherments, 180 ; disjunctive 
reasoning, 184 ; induction, 190 ; 
electricity, 190 ; chemistry, 192. 

Sensation, kinds, i ; of skin and 
muscles, i ; of taste, 3 ; of smell, 
6 ; of hearing, 11 ; of sight, 12 ; 
color-blindness, 12 ; means of 
specific knowledge, 16 ; chief end 
of man, 21 ; design of nervous 
system, 22. 

Systematization, kinds, 195 ; mathe- 
matical, 195 ; physical, 200 ; bo- 
tanical, 204 ; zoological, 206 ; 
grammatical, 207 ; logical, 207 ; 
ethical, 211 ; sesthetical, 211 ; 
metaphysical, 212. 

Temperature, sensations of, 2. 

Utilities, common, origin of, 134. 

Volition, nature of, 238 ; habit, 239 ; 
nervous determination, 239 ; dis- 
positional, 242, 243 ; heredity, 
244 ; deliberative, 245 ; qualita- 
tive, 248 ; quantitative, 252 ; rela- 
tional, 255. 

Will, question of freedom or neces- 
sity, 246, 247, 248, 372. 

Xerxes, his host at the Hellespont, 

314- 
Year, payment by the, on house, 

etc., purchased, 185. 

Zoilus, his judgment on Homer and 
Victor Hugo's judgment on him, 
166. 



OCT 13 1904 



